No more somedays

I saw it first in print. I was casually flipping through the pages of a random magazine, and stopped because the pictures were absolutely gorgeous. I looked closer. The Hiawatha trail.

Hiawatha?

That sounded so familiar to me. My mind went back to my elementary school days in Idaho, and I was certain I had learned something about the Hiawatha trail. At this point, I was captivated and reading every word of the article. The more I read, the more interested I became. It sounded like a perfect thing to do in the summer with my family. Fifteen miles of gently descending mountain biking, passing through old train tunnels and trestle bridges with incredible views the entire way?? YES!

I tucked the Hiawatha biking trail onto the list of things I planned on doing…someday.

Someday.

I had become proficient at somedays. I practiced it a lot. I was going to do, buy, see, visit, make, and experience so many things that the list in my head had grown exponentially. Someday—a word that was creating a whole lot of not todays. Ugh. I was getting tired of that.

In 2018, a few years after I read about the Hiawatha trail, my extended family planned a reunion in Montana to see Glacier National Park. As we planned the details, that biking trail popped into my mind. I looked up the distance from our vacation home to the bike trail…only a couple hours away! This was it. We had to do it. I presented the idea to my siblings, and they agreed to ride the Hiawatha with me.

Glacier National Park was AMAZING, of course. The hikes and beauty are unreal. Spending time with family and seeing a beautiful part of the country are two of my favorite things! But when we walked into the little shop in Idaho to get our bikes and equipment, my eyes filled with tears. I recognized several images from the pictures I had seen in the magazine years before. At first, I felt stupid. Crying?

Then I realized the overwhelming emotion came because I had turned one of my somedays into today.

If you are curious, biking the Hiawatha trail is still one of my favorite things I’ve ever done. Words cannot describe how beautiful, how fun, and how memorable that 15-mile bike ride turned out to be. It was PERFECT.

What about you? Do you have a lot of somedays—or as I like to call them, not todays? Are there things you want to start or finish that you keep putting off? Is the someday list in your head much longer than the accomplished list in real life? If you are answering yes to all these questions—maybe it’s time for you to try something different. Start small. Just pick one thing and tackle that.

I implemented this philosophy into my own life. I am attempting to consume less and do more. While I haven’t perfected it, I have been whittling down my ever-expanding list of somedays. And nothing feels better than turning those far-off somedays into I-did-it-todays!!