Although I finished my formal education a decade ago, I never want to stop learning and growing. The world is one big classroom.
Arts & Culture
I attended 17 art/cultural venues and events:
- Downtown LA Artwalk
- LA Grammy Museum, including the Michael Jackson exhibit and Strange Kozmic Experience: The Art and Artifacts of the Icons Who Defined a Generation (exhibit on Jimmy Hendrix, The Doors, and Janis Joplin)
- Huntington Library Arboretum and Botanical Gardens
- Wine and Jazz Festival at Hollywood and Highland
- Feast of San Gennaro
- Japanese American National Museum
- Cherry Blossom Festival in Little Tokyo
- La Luz De Jesus Gallery
- Pasadena Chalk Art Festival
- GLOW Santa Monica
- Getty Villa
- Museum of Modern Art
- Guggenheim
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
- American Museum of Natural History
- Statue of Liberty/Liberty Island Museum
- Ellis Island Immigration Museum
Entertainment
- Film: I watched 30 new films (10 foreign, 10 cult classics, 10 classics)
- Music: I like all kinds of music except for heavy metal; however, pop, R&B, and hip hop dominate my playlists, and I wanted to give other music a chance. I listened to 30 new (to me) artists, 30 genres/subgenres of music, and 30 international songs. Favorite discoveries included Jose Gonzalez, Greg Laswell, jazz, blues, swing, Indian, Moroccan, and French music, especially Edith Piaf.
- Theatre: Broadway’s Lion King
- Television: I watched 30 documentaries/educational programs on the History, Discovery, and PBS channels, including the America: The Story of Us series, WW2 in HD, and Into the Universe with Hawking.
Education/Skills
With the emergence of sites like Groupon, Living Social, and Tippr, among others, I found great deals for various creative and life skills classes. I also applied for a library card and began to read non-fiction and study educational material. And of course, the internet is a wealth of information. Some subjects were new, while others I studied in school and wanted to revisit and expand upon.
- Politics (including local, state, and national government)
- History (including the Cold War, Apartheid, Palestine/Israel conflict, Philippine History)
- Greek and Roman mythology
- Astronomy: I took a free online class that offered 10 lessons over 10 weeks with a test at the end. I didn’t cheat and got 17 out of 20 questions right.
- World religions
- Finances (including stocks, bonds, trust funds, insurance, estate planning, wills)
- Basic Photoshop (altering backgrounds, replacing someone’s head with another)
- Quickbooks
- Basic Italian (numbers, alphabet, months, common phrases)
- Morse code (as I don’t use it/practice regularly, I no longer remember it)
- Sign language: I taught myself the alphabet and “Happy Birthday” in elementary school, but that was the extent of my knowledge. I wanted to expand my vocabulary to include basic phrases and terms, especially those used in communicating with babies.
- Car basics: A friend and I took a car care class geared towards women. Our instructor has owned and operated her car repair shop for over 25 years. The purpose of the class was so we can properly maintain our cars and prolong their lives – not to become auto mechanics. The majority of the class was spent on the five important fluids, how to check them, and what their color and levels mean. We also learned about belts, hoses, tires, and filters.
- Basic survival class: I took a one day course that was half lecture/demonstration and half hands-on. We were taught the most important skills to keep ourselves alive the first 24-48 hours of being stranded somewhere with nothing, including building shelter, preventing hypothermia, finding water, creating a fire, making containers (out of tree bark), and sterilizing water.
- Cooking class: I wouldn’t call myself a chef, but I manage in the kitchen. I can follow recipes, and even when I improvise, dishes come out okay. Because I live by myself and have only a kitchenette, I cook simple things. I usually make meals that take less than five minutes to prepare and less than 15-20 minutes to cook. But one day I do want to get my Martha Stewart on, and I thought I’d take a cooking class to learn how to make something “fancy.” Buywithme.com had a great deal for a cooking class. Each class has a theme, and the theme for my class was “garlic lovers.” The menu included garlic sesame ribs, garlic spinach with soy dressing, grilled green beans with garlic dressing, linguini with garlic and oil, garlic bread, and amaretto cake with homemade real whip cream. There were nine students, and we all were hands on – I whisked, chopped, minced, and grilled. After everything was cooked, we all sat down to eat and had wine.
Reading Rambo
After college, I rarely read books for pleasure. It’s not that I purposely avoided them. I just spent most of my spare time doing other things. I probably averaged 2-3 books a year, if any. Like with other items in my project, my magic number was 30. I ended up reading 26, which still satisfies me. From the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen to Dorothy Parker and Jack Kerouac and to Candace Bushnell and J.K. Rowling, my literary choices crossed the gamut. If I had to pick the top three that made the most impact on me, I’d say they were:
The Complete Artist’s Way: Creativity As a Spiritual Practice by Julia Cameron
The Complete Artist’s Way contains three of Cameron’s books: The Artist’s Way, Walking in This World, and Finding Water. Believing that everyone has an artist inside them, Cameron views creativity as a spiritual practice. The Artist’s Way is a manual that helps unblock the fears and negativity so one can let their inner artist free, whether they write, paint, sculpt, etc. Walking in This World puts creativity to practical use so one can integrate art into their daily lives. Finding Water emphasizes the importance of remaining on one’s creative path no matter how difficult.
Since each chapter was to be completed in one week, the book/workbook took nine months to complete. I’ll always be a work in progress, but this nine month exercise taught me to stop and “delight in the beauty that surrounds me,” strengthened my discipline and abilities, and gave me the tools to get me out of a block/funk sooner than later. Perhaps the most important thing I learned during this “creative pregnancy” was confidence and that the only validation truly needed is from within. 
The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
The first Harry Potter book came out when I was 16, but I never heard of it until the first movie, which I saw on my college campus movie channel a year after its original theatrical release. Even then, I honestly thought it was a kids’ book, meaning like a hundred or so pages. I saw the second movie in the theaters with some friends who were fans of the book, and after that, I made it a tradition to see every movie in the theater – but I still didn’t care to read the books.
Then came the hoopla over the last book published in 2007, and I didn’t want to wait four years for the last movie. I wanted to know what happens first hand. I loved the book, and I considered reading the series from the beginning. With my hectic schedule, I never got around to it, and I told myself I didn’t need to because I knew the end.
Fast forward three years, and I realized I wanted to read the whole series before the final movie premiered. Since Amazon was selling the trunk of the hardcover books for 60% off, I bought it as a Christmas gift for myself and spent December 2010 – January 2011 reading the series. I just absolutely fell in love with this world and its characters. I know many die-hard fans of the book don’t like the movies because of what’s left out or changed, but because I watched the movies first (and adored them), reading the books was like adding a layer for me instead of taking something away.
Before reading this series, I never understood the appeal of rereading a book, especially for pleasure. As I write this, I’m in the middle of reading the series for the third time. These books are worth rereading, and without them, I probably wouldn’t have one of my best friends. What started out as us bonding over the books and seeing the midnight screening of Deathly Hallows 2 together has resulted in countless talks and numerous adventures, including a trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park in Orlando.
Getting the Pretty Back by Molly Ringwald
When I was in middle and high school, I had a girl crush on Molly Ringwald. I loved 80s movies, in particular 80s teen movies, of which she was the queen. So when I was at Papyrus one day and saw her book Getting the Pretty Back: Friendship, Family, and Finding the Perfect Lipstick, I had to buy it (of course I went on Amazon where I got it at more than half off).
Even though I picked up the book because Molly was on the cover, I bought it because she wrote it after turning 40 and wanted to share her life lessons. I got the book weeks before turning 30, and having learned a lot since I was 20, I was curious about her journey to the next ‘big’ age of 40.
The book includes anecdotes and advice about men, fashion, entertaining, and family, among others. It was a fun read, and although some insights weren’t anything mind-blowing, I was still inspired. At some point in our lives, many of us start to hide who we truly are and sacrifice what would make us really happy. Getting the Pretty Back is about embracing your true self and living your life on your terms.
Word Up
I admire people who can eloquently and effortlessly use a large vocabulary (providing that they don’t consider themselves superior). Sometimes I’m even intimidated because I rarely use “S.A.T. words” (and when I do, it’s often in written form). As a result, I signed up for daily vocabulary words from Merriam Webster and Wordsmith. I may never need to sound like a Dawson’s Creek alum, but if I ever encountered one, I want to understand them without a dictionary on hand.
I mentioned Eat, Pray, Love as my inspiration for this project. During Elizabeth Gilbert’s journey, she tried to figure out her “word.” I kept a list of all the vocabulary words I received during the year and decided to pick my word from it. I chose voluptuary.
vo-lup-tu-ar-y [vuh-luhp-choo-er-ee] noun: a person whose life is devoted to the pursuit and enjoyment of luxury and sensual pleasure adjective: of, pertaining to, or characterized by preoccupation with luxury and sensual pleasure: voluptuary tastes
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