My Personal Quest: To Explore 112 Locations w/in "Best of San Diego 2007" List

[Kaprese408]

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Tonight I had a random inspiration for a adventurous idea I just had tonight. I am so excited about this new goal of mine I thought i would share, but before that I would like to give everyone here a quick background of the day i had...

It has been more than one year now since i made the decision to leave my family and move to San Diego for school (with the full support of my parents). I always wanted to move out because my family is extremely dysfunctional and has been a obstycle in my life (I do not mean it in a horrible way...my family is doing the best they can with the knowledge and ability they currently have)...Unlike me no one else really truely has decided to pursue personal growth. Well living within my dysfunctional family system for my entire life...i have developed a lot of self sabatoging negative habitual patterns. These are the main things i want to change and would experience trenmendous growth if i was able to just get away from all of the negativtity that was around me. Well that is what i did and i moved to San Diego last Aug.

The first year on my own is another story where i was not completely on my own and depended on someone else...but that is another story not meant to be shared at this time. My point-my first year did not help me grow, in fact it intensified my negative patterns. It was only recently 3 months ago where i finally admitted i had a problem and began my conscious hunt for the knowledge i needed to change my life around. So i started to make different choices and slowly started seeing progress. At least i thought....

Well i came home for Thanksgiving for this whole week and some of last. This is the second time i have been back home "the Bay Area" in CA since I started going through this life changing transition (at least i hope i am). The first time around it was the same ol' same ol'...i just tried to stay out of all the family drama (wasn't too succsssful since i kept getting pulled in through emotion i guess).

But now looking back to my first trip back i was really successful because this time I extremely blew it. One of the craziest verbal fight broke out tonight with my bro and mom. Usually its my brother that is the cause of most of the fights and my mom coming in second. Ragaolic (a word i invented recently...least i dont think it exists) runs in our family and the extended family. I am one of the ragaolics...but am on a path to control, learn, and change from it...no one else cares to change...thats their problem. Well my mom and bro was going at it...i stuck my nose where i shouldn't have trying to "help" and got pulled in it sooooo deep that there wasy no turning back.

Was left in complete mental F*** over and emotionally everywhere. For the first time in more than a year... I WAS BACK TO THE PERSON i remember i was with my family. I had not been that deep with them for more than a year now. At that moment i felt (still do a bit) that i had made no progress and the last three months have not done a thing. I was bummed out, sad, maybe working my way to depression again.

Couldn't stop thinking about all the goals that i had not accomplished yet because most of the time i had been focusing on personal growth, but after this incident i couldn't see any...did i have any personal growth in the last three months? I couldnt see any. As i type this i notice i am using a lot of past tense. Can it be that those feelings and thoughts have started to subside (am still dissappointed though).

The GOOD NEWS... Somewhere through all of this craziness i got enough energy to start working on one of my goals...researching San Diego. A few weeks back i found this great site that i didnt have time to look at so i bookmarked it. Checked it out today and it was from San Diego Magazine. They had done some research and put out a article of "Best of San Diego 2007". As i looked it over and all the 112 places they had listed a crazy idea popped in my head. As i started thinking it over more and more i started realizing i could conquer a lot of my goals with this one project. I can explore the city in a adventerous and exciting fun way. I can meet tons of people. I can get to know "myself" by spending some quality time with "myself". I could work on my critical thinking, analysizing, and problems solving skills all in one.

So I DECIDED my Quest/Mission/Journey/Adventure: to explore, visit, critque, and experience all 112 places listed in that article randomly and document it all in a journal. Going to 2-3 places a week i estimate a 9-14 month quest. Something to help me focus on ME, and a fun goal at that.

One concern i have though: based on my past exprience of myself (including the last 3 months where i have been working hard at making changes)...i have a negative habit of starting projects but procrastinating in finishing them...for one i tend to lose focus and/or motivation after a while. So one solution i came up with was to get started on my PLAN asap, which i did. I got practically most of it done. Second solution which i am thinking about doing is posting a thread on my progress with my quest to share my experiences with everyone here...and possibly to help me stay focused.

If I do decide to continue this thread with progress notes, i will post my detailed plan with objective, why i chose this goal, and the rules of the game (as i decided to call them) in the thread.

I would love any feedback (good and bad), comments, and hope someone can take something out of this.