A New Challenge

Wow, so it's officially been absurdly long since I last posted on here!  A good excuse?  I wish I had one.  I guess that's the real task when it comes to blogging, finding the time to keep up with it.  So as you may or may not remember, I previously had a blog called 7 Days to Change My Life.  On 7DtCML, I took on various projects or tasks for one week and blogged about the result.  This varied from 7 days of no texting from my mobile phone to 7 days to photograph images of the people in my day-to-day world.  What I liked about the concept was that is asked me to do more than just sit and write on the computer.  Plus, I often gained some little insight from reflecting on what I was getting up to that week.

With this in mind, I've decided that the best way to get some incentive to write on here is to perhaps take on a larger project/challenge.  This will also take the guesswork out of what to write about every week.  Which brings me to what I've been thinking about lately, this September will mark four years since I moved back to Sydney.  The majority of those years have been spent at a job where I am working with American students and often providing them with recommendations of what to do in Sydney.  While I wouldn't say I've done nothing with my time here, I must admit there is a lot around this town that I have simply not made the effort to do.  For instance, with the end of the recent Biennale, I waited until the last weekend possible before finally taking the free ferry over to Cockatoo Island.  It was a really great afternoon and the island is definitely worth the visit.  More on this visit later this week, but it was one of those days where I was on the ferry coming back to Circular Quay and wondering, "WHY HAS THIS TAKEN ME SO LONG TO DO?"

This morning, I felt like I was just letting a great opportunity race past me (quite literally) with the City 2 Surf.  Over the last couple months I have been seeing and hearing about the race more than previous years.  I was really interested in participating this year.  For those of you more American than Sydneysider, the City 2 Surf is a 14 km road race from Hyde Park in the Central Business District along the harbour to Bondi Beach.  It started in 1971 and has since become a massive race for anyone and everyone.  While a handful of friends were registering this year, I remained noncommittal until it was too late.  They capped the race at 80,000 participants!  That's right, 80,000 people had their act together whilst I sat there twiddling my thumbs. As someone who is always preaching to Americans about maximizing their experience here in Sydney, I sure do drop the ball sometimes when it comes to my personal experience here.

But no more!

The other night I started brainstorming with a close mate of mine while eating at Bodega, the perfect example of a great eatery I've been meaning to get to for ages but have put off visiting.  We started listing things we think fairly mandatory for any Sydneysider.  It didn't take long before I had a listing of over 75 things one should do, see, eat, or experience in the greater Sydney area.  Now many of these things I have done before, but a lot of them I have only heard or read about.  So instead of letting another year pass me by, I am going attack this list head on.  Over the next year I am going to attempt to do all of the things on my list bigger and better than ever before.  Granted some of these things may not be a possibility over the next year (ex. The Biennale of Sydney only happens every two years), but perhaps some of these I can simply revisit one way or another.  In fact, another Herculean task I have wanted to tackle for the last couple years has been going through the thousands of images I have shot while in Australia.  The large majority of these have never been edited, printed, or even viewed since they were originally taken.  This might be the perfect reason to start going through those.

So while I have that initial list of approximately 75 things to do, I would greatly appreciate suggestions from you.  I am not going to publish the list yet.  I am curious what you all think.  So feel free to comment on this post.  I will tell you what Number 1 will be though, next year I am running the City 2 Surf.

So while it's another year before I can tackle the first thing on my list, I did manage to get a great spot on the footbridge between Darlinghurst and Rushcutters Bay to see the front of the pack burst out of the Kings Cross tunnel.  I thought this snap was worth sharing...