40x365

Yes, it’s true. I know you can’t believe it. You think, “She really doesn’t look that old. And for heaven’s sake she doesn’t act that old!” Happy birthday to ME!! I’m 40 years old today. Wow, it really does sound old. I know we’ve been through this before, but I can’t help to say it again. My tiny glimmer of hope is that I keep hearing Oprah say how life really begins at forty. Perhaps now that I am forty I’ll stop watching her.

OK, enough dwelling on the “oldness” of forty. As I’ve mentioned before it’s really not bothering me as much as I thought it would. I am a blessed woman in so many ways. Today I thank God for the life He has given me and for the wonderful adventures I’ll explore moving forward.

Now let’s talk about this 40x365 thing. I saw it on a blog crawl one morning a few months ago and was intrigued by the idea. In honor of my 40th birthday – and really to celebrate how blessed I am – each day over the next year (365 days in case you forgot) I’m going to write about one person who has impacted my life either big or small. Oh, and I have to do it in 40 words. No more, no less. Another rule is I have to remember their name. In other words, the kind old man (albeit a little creepy) who gave my friend Tami and I a personal walking tour of Brugge, Belgium has definitely left a mark on my life footprint but he’s a no-go because I don’t know his name. [BTW, that SO could have turned out ugly and in the news, but he really was just a kind old man. I tell ya, I’m blessed.]

You may be thinking, “I know Amy has lots of family & friends, but can she really know 365 people worthy of a 40 word blog post?” The first 100 were easy peasy. And honestly, the second hundred wasn’t too hard either. Then I had to start asking Jeff for suggestions, and going through my life to find little pockets of people I’d forgotten about. My facebook friend list has helped a lot, but admittedly I have handfuls of FB friends that I couldn’t write five words about, let alone forty. Right now my list is at 329 and I’m hopeful over the next year that I’ll meet 36 interesting people and remember to ask their name.


One last thing – the order is completely random. So don’t get too bent out of shape when your day is 285 and Sr. Theophane was day 42. Honestly, she should be in the top ten but we’ll leave that for another blog post.

We start tomorrow.
40 years 40 words
365 people 365 days