Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Life, Lists & Skis
    Life, Lists & Skis
    Life, Lists & Skis
    Ebook102 pages1 hour

    Life, Lists & Skis

    By Amanda Randall

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    ‘Skiing makes you see inside yourself, see who you are.’

    For a serial planner, not planning the living daylights out of life is one of the hardest things to do. But when author Amanda Randall’s what ifs start to niggle her mind – what if I’ve left it too late to try new things? What if I opened my mind? What if I don’t make a plan? – she is astonished by the results of just letting life unfold around her.

    This isn’t just a book about making lists, or how to carry skis (and boots and helmet) without ending up with your bum in the air, it’s a book about how changing one thing in your life can change everything. Absolutely. Everything.

    ‘If you think you’ve left it too late to try something new, then you have to read this.’

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAmanda Randall
    Release dateOct 10, 2018
    ISBN9780463971109
    Life, Lists & Skis

    Related to Life, Lists & Skis

    Related ebooks

    Self-Improvement For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Writing To Change The World

      Jun 14, 2021

      Readers love a good story—that’s a given. But book lovers also enjoy the chance to learn about social and political issues. Consider the award-winning crime novel Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha, which describes racial tensions in 1990s Los Angeles

      8 min read

    • Article

      Class Of Covid-19

      Feb 27, 2021

      Class Of Covid-19
      7 min read

    • Article

      It’s never too Late

      Apr 25, 2020

      It’s never too Late
      7 min read

    • Article

      Postcards from Fairyland

      Jun 15, 2023

      Postcards from Fairyland
      10 min read

    • Article

      Into the Light

      Apr 29, 2023

      Into the Light
      11 min read

    • Article

      Inkers Con

      Feb 27, 2021

      Inkers Con
      3 min read

    • Article

      Lucca

      Apr 9, 2020

      Lucca
      11 min read

    • Article

      When Mystery and Mythology Collide

      Aug 7, 2023

      Writing and publishing advice for picture books, middle-grade, and young adult storytelling. The act of writing is already a deeply personal endeavor. We sit at our desks or on our couches, at kitchen tables or back patios, and we pour out of us the

      4 min read

    • Article

      Come Back Soon

      Dec 13, 2022

      Come Back Soon
      3 min read

    • Article

      You Hunt With The Beaver?

      May 12, 2021

      You Hunt With The Beaver?
      4 min read

    • Article

      Profits Of Doom

      Oct 12, 2018

      Profits Of Doom
      7 min read

    • Article

      Headlining Search Tips

      Feb 28, 2023

      All US newspaper sleuthing should start with Chronicling America’s U.S. Newspaper Directory, where you can find newspapers that covered your ancestral hometowns. Drill down to the time periods and locales of interest, then click on entries of individ

      4 min read

    • Article

      Eat, Read, Travel

      Oct 19, 2021

      Eat, Read, Travel
      3 min read

    • Article

      Street Meat

      Nov 4, 2021

      Street Meat
      10 min read

    • Article

      Inspiration Everywhere

      Jun 19, 2021

      Inspiration Everywhere
      7 min read

    • Article

      Deadlines

      Dec 13, 2023

      POETS & WRITERS MAGAZINE ANNOUNCES state, national, and international prizes in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and translation. We list only prizes of $ 1,000 or more, prizes of $,500 or more that charge no entry fee, and prestigious nonmoneta

      27 min read

    • Article

      Synnøve Karlsen

      Sep 16, 2021

      Synnøve Karlsen
      1 min read

    • Article

      When Less Is More

      Oct 6, 2022

      When Less Is More
      6 min read

    • Article

      Site-Seeing

      Jun 22, 2021

      Site-Seeing
      13 min read

    • Article

      Finding That Elusive Ancestor

      May 3, 2022

      Finding That Elusive Ancestor
      6 min read

    • Article

      How Surnames Change

      Aug 24, 2021

      AVOIDING NEGATIVE CONNOTATIONS Changes can occur not just to make a name seem less indecent, as with bowdlerisation, but to dissociate it from any negative connotations. This explains why Death has often been altered to De’Ath or Deeth. BOWDLERISATI

      1 min read

    • Article

      Goodbye Things, Hello Life

      May 19, 2020

      Goodbye Things, Hello Life
      7 min read

    • Article

      BOOM SHANKAR Sitting Pretty.

      Mar 4, 2021

      BOOM SHANKAR Sitting Pretty.
      11 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Life, Lists & Skis

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Life, Lists & Skis - Amanda Randall

      Introduction

      This is a not just a book about skiing, it is a book about taking steps to do new things. But before I talk about skiing and new things I need to tell you a little about me. I need to tell you how I came to be sitting here, telling you that you should try new things and that trying new things will change you.

      I really like a to-do list; collecting and organising my thoughts into something I can tick off. Lists have been my method of creating calm in a disordered world and, let’s face it, we live and operate in a disordered world. Life often means there are too many things to deal with and an overwhelming feeling that I can never get them all done. These items whirl around in my mind until I sit down and write a list. Well, actually, I write multiple lists, all over the place in various notebooks, on whiteboards, in scribble pads and on Post-It Notes. Lists also give me an immense sense of satisfaction and achievement. It feels good to take a pen and neatly tick each item off. I have been known to add things to my list just to immediately tick them off, such is the satisfaction I get from that little tick.

      It is no surprise that my decision to learn to ski came from an item on one of my lists. But this was no regular list. This list was in its own very special, very beautiful notebook, and was made up of ideas that I thought might not be possible. This was my bucket list.

      I was thirty-six and, to most people looking in on my life, I had already achieved a lot. I had been to university and got a degree, and then got a job straight out of university in my chosen career. For fifteen years I forged a successful path to the position of human resources director. I’d bought a house, always owned a car that worked, had been on nice holidays – all the things you are supposed to do. I sound rather privileged and precious when I describe myself, but I came from a modest background and grew up in a one-parent-income family in east London, and was the first in my family to head off to university and have a business career. The eldest of two children, I was very much the stereotypical older child. I felt pressured to lead the way, to set a good example, to strive ahead and make a success of life, and I responded to this pressure by choosing to work hard, be the best I could in my career, and to be successful. Success meant financial security and a secure career – well, that is how I defined success – but at thirty-six I wrote my bucket list in my beautiful notebook and something started shifting inside me. It started as a small murmur of a voice asking me to challenge my own definition of success, the definition I had been brought up to believe. Did success only mean financial security and a secure career?

      I believe that we make choices every moment of every day, and that we are in control of those choices. Yes, I was the older child. Yes, I felt pressure to be an achiever. But I had chosen to follow that expectation; I had chosen my definition of success, yet that did not include the things on my bucket list. If it was all about the choices I made, what if I wanted to choose to do something different now?

      Something scratched at my mind, niggled away at me. If I had been so successful in the things I had chosen to focus on, perhaps I could focus on some new things? What if I could start to do things a little differently? I kept looking at that bucket list, the one in its own special notebook, the one that contained all the things I would still like to do, and the more I looked the more that small voice kept whispering what if . . .

      I was drawn to quotes and memes asking what you might regret on your deathbed; what stories you will tell in old age, and how you measured your successful life? What if there was something more? What if it was something different?

      This thinking was scary and unchartered territory for me. I was a sensible woman who did the right things . . . and now I was starting to question what the right things were and if I really was that sensible after all.

      I did not know or understand what this what if was. I did not even know where to start to think about it. How could I? All the people I had surrounded myself with were like me. That’s what you do when you are sure you have your life mapped out perfectly; you gravitate towards people who are just like you and do just what you do, and it reassures you that you are right. Anyone who is not like you, or living a life like you, is rejected without you even realising you are doing it. They represent anarchy in your structured, sensible world, and we cannot have anarchy, as this is what we have been avoiding all our life.

      The what if question was always there, though, niggling away, and I tried to ignore it and carry on with my sensible life.

      The what if was determined to be more than a niggle, and it started to let those anarchists have a bit more of my time. I found myself spending more time talking to people who did not have such sensible lives, the ones who had wilder younger years, and I was intrigued by their stories. I wanted to hear more and more, and the what if started to say, I think you missed a trick here.

      But I silenced the what if. It was too late. I could not go back in time and have the experiences these people had had in their twenties. The travel. The spontaneity. I had chosen my life. It was not a bad life, or a bad choice, as I appeared to have it all; but there was a growing gap for more, and I had no idea how to fill this gap. I had a list, but what would I do with it? How did that list fit into my world? What was my plan?

      The wonderful, amazing, scary revelation here is that I did not make a plan; I did not decide how I was going to fill that gap. I did, however, on some level, make a choice: I made a choice to open my mind a little. I did not consciously make a calendar entry that said, Have an open mind today. Yet somewhere, somehow, my thinking had shifted, and so I went from having a very closed mind to one that was more open to possibility. For a serious planner, this is an incredibly hard thing to accept. I had planned my life to achieve the goals I set myself. I had not made a plan about how to fill this gap, yet the gap started to fill. Life found a way.

      Chapter One

      When is the Right Time?

      In my sensible job, within my sensible life, I was asked to go on a leadership event to an unknown destination where I was told to bring walking boots. My sensible life so far had not required me to own walking boots – well, not since I had participated in the Duke of Edinburgh Award in sixth form. I had a life controlled by lists, and now I had to go somewhere unknown with walking boots, with the people I worked with. What sort of new horror was this? At this point in my story I was nowhere near believing that my life needed to be less planned and less controlled, and this just seemed awful.

      With no choice I got on the flight. This was all I was told: Meet the rest of the team in Rome. Pulling my large wheelie suitcase behind me – if I did not own walking boots, I certainly did not own luggage options that were not a suitcase – I arrived at the designated meeting point.

      I spotted the event team. Laid out beside them were rows of red backpacks. I collected

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1