I completed my first 101 Things list yesterday and I’m rolling straight into my second one. I learnt a bit about myself doing my last list. #1—no 30-day challenges. For me these lists are mainly about being intentional around bringing more things that align with my values into my life, especially things that I might let slide if I didn’t make some kind of commitment to them. So you’ll see that I’ve tried to include things that support my relationships (including the most important one with God), community, health and fitness, life-long learning, creativity and curiosity, with a few things thrown in to try to keep the chaos at bay.

One thing that I did learn but too late in the game to help get my completion rate up was the importance of regular review and adding items to my monthly/weekly/daily lists. The 100-day check-ins were good but not good enough. This time I have a whizz bang spreadsheet tracker already to go.

So without further ado, the list:

1. Icon for blog site
2. Update the Travel Pages on my blog – I’m missing my last few major trips.
3. Book List Pages for my Blog – So I can a record of how many I’ve read
4. NaBloPoMo – I’ve done it the last few years and it’s fun but busy
5. Read 5 Books by Australian Indigenous authors
6. Read Book Award Winners – 5 books from each of the lists I’m working through (35 books)
7. Read 20 Books for Read Around the World Challenge
8. Free Write 100 times https://writers.com/what-is-free-writing. I love the idea of morning pages and have done them on and off but I don’t want to commit to everyday. This will be a little less than 1 per week.
9. Ten Lists of Things I don’t want to forget https://theisolationjournals.substack.com/p/2200-lists-later.
10. Have a system for keeping notes up to date. – I have heaps of unprocessed notes just floating around and am constantly adding more. I either need to stop taking notes or actually do something with them.
11. Transfer notes from five of my paper journals to Obsidian – this is a hugely scaled down rollover goal from my last list.
12. Sort through notes imported from ROAM – I’ve imported them to Obsidian and just need to delete what isn’t relevant anymore and link up what’s left.
13. Sort through notes imported from Evernote – see above
14. Sort through notes imported from old blog – and again
15. Try keeping a book journal https://rubysstudio.substack.com/p/on-the-benefits-of-book-journaling?utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true. I do have a very bad habit of forgetting what I’ve just read. I think this would be an interesting exercise.
16. Make a new list – this will probably appear on every list until I grow tired of making them
17. Do 1 Unassisted chin-up
18. Achieve a running grade age result of 65% in 5K, 10K and HM (current best is 63.78% in 10K) https://www.howardgrubb.co.uk/athletics/mldrroad25.html – this seems to be the best way to structure my running goals
19. Work through the chapters of Built to Move. Test and work to improve each benchmark Retest every 6 months after first test.
20. Complete a Marathon – Berlin is booked in September this year
21. APSOC Cross Country Season – I haven’t done a season since my stress fracture. I actually ran the first race of that season with my stress fracture that was yet to be diagnosed and got a course PB.
22. Do 4 new to me races – I need to break out of my race rut. There are a heap of races on the Melbourne running calendar that I’ve never done.
23. Run 2000 km in a year – downgrading from my last list’s goal. This will still be a challenge though.
24. Clean out and organise study – rollover goal
25. Clean out and organise the hall cupboard – as above
26. Add photos to our holiday gallery – we have a gallery wall with holiday snaps in the hallway outside our study and we need to add some photos from recent holidays
27. Clean out the box in our wardrobe and put in a full-length mirror – the box clearing is a rollover goal. I need to do it so we can put a mirror in
28. Decorate Spare Room – this is just a matter of maybe something for the walls and styling the shelves.
29. Put up E and K’s Wedding Photos – they haven’t received them from the photographer yet, but we will be buying some to put on the wall
30. Complete 1 idea from each chapter of the Permaculture Handbook
31. Find an artwork I love for our house
32. Fix our automatic computer backup – rollover goal
33. Save seeds and grow veggies from saved seeds
34. Wardrobe cleanout every change of season
35. Pantry Cleanout every six months
36. Put up tiles – we’ve been collecting tiles on our travels and we have a wall out near our BBQ that we want to hang them on.
37. Memorise 50 verses of scripture
38. Go on a retreat – rollover goal
39. List 1001 Things to be grateful for
40. Read through the Bible – I like to do this at least once every few years. I don’t plan to do it in a year though. I want to take longer so I can get into it.
41. Learn 10 Christmas Carols – the lady who used to be the organist at our church is getting increasingly frail, and so, they might need to sub on the piano when they go round the nursing homes singing carols
42. Develop my skills in playing piano by ear – complete my piano course. I’m working through a worship piano course, which I need to finish. I always played using sheet music before and had never used chord charts, so it’s been a learning curve.
43. Master 5 new rhythm patterns and 5 fills – useful for being able to add a bit more when I don’t have other musicians with me.
44. Send Snail mail (x20) – if you’d like to get a postcard from Australia, email me your details.
45. Make one phone call and send 4 texts every month, just to catch up with friends or family – I am very slack with this kind of thing
46. Family birthday dinners – we have the first one already booked for H
47. Sibling catchups (x10) – I don’t do this often enough either
48. Update in case of death folder
49. Invite people for meals (x20)
50. Do things from the Be the Gift Calendar (x40)
51. Join a citizen science project
52. Donate blood – rollover goal
53. Pick up Rubbish (x4)
54. See the Fairy Penguins in St Kilda – rollover goal
55. Neighbourhood talks, shows or other activities (x5)
56. Spot and photograph 50 local birds – last list I had “learn more about the local environment” and I borrowed a book “Birds of Bayside” which inspired this project.
57. Read books about Melbourne (x5)
58. Hometown Tourist (x2) – I enjoyed doing this last list, and there is so much more to see in Melbourne, so I’m doing it again
59. Melbourne museum or gallery visits (x5)
60. Melbourne restaurants
61. Local hiking (x4)
62. Regional destination restaurants
63. Germany
64. Millford/Routeburn
65. Morocco
66. Travel for one more of G’s major marathons (other than Berlin)
67. Family trip
68. Victorian National Parks (x4)
69. Make 20 black out poems https://www.craftaliciousme.com/how-i-create-my-black-out-poetry/
70. Do some craft (x2)
71. Photo or video a day for a month
72. 100 Project with my good camera (create 100 images I’m especially proud of)
73. Changing seasons photo project
74. Print kids high school books
75. Print kids baby books
76. Print kids trip books
77. Print H’s primary school book
78. Print other trip books (x2)
79. Print year books (x2)
80. Buy nothing new challenge – I’ll probably make this a three month challenge, but allowing replacements of essentials (like running shoes)
81. Get to level 50 in Italian and 60 in French and 30 in Spanish (currently 7, 18 and 14 respectively) on Duolingo
82. Learn how to say my list of basic travel phrases in the language of each non-English speaking country we travel to.
83. Movie marathon
84. Time track for a week (x5)
85. Ride my bike 40 times – I was biking heaps but have fallen out of the habit
86. Games Night (x4) – this was fun so I think I can make it happen again
87. Go to 10 live performances (could be as simple as live music at the pub)
88. 10 Solo Screen-free days (TV watching with G allowed but no personal screen)
89. Swim 20 times in open water
90. Inspired by Engie’s goal to spend more time outside, I’m going to try to average two hours per day but I’ll just track loosely for a year (https://ngradstudent.blogspot.com/2026/01/2026-goals.html)
91. See a platypus in the wild
92. Do ten TAON Prompts (from the book or Substack) – TOAN = The Art of Noticing
93. Navigate a new town for the day without using my phone (paper maps OK) – I don’t want to lose those skills. When I started driving we used the Melways and had to look up where we were going and try to memorise any new bits we didn’t know. I remember having to pull over and refresh. BUT I won’t be doing this driving, just walking.
94. Make Christmas pudding with mum
95. Make Christmas cake with mum
96. Bake 20 sweet treats
97. Gardening (x40) – another thing I’ve got out of the habit of doing regularly enough as a result the garden is not looking as good as it could.
98. Make 50 new recipes
99. Bottling (x10)
100. Transfer my APS negatives to digital
101. Online French Course – rollover goal

Check-ins will be on 17/9/2026, 26/12/2026, 5/4/2027, 14/7/2027, 22/10/2027, 31/1/2028, 9/5/2028, 17/8/2028, 25/11/2028 and I will finish on 6/3/2029.