I wrote a blog post back in April 2016 about how I was going to do 62 challenges in 62 months to distract myself from all the legal drama that was stretching out after my mother’s tragic death in October 2015.  In just over five years, I wanted to achieve the many goals, trips and personal challenges that I’d short-listed as my ultimate bucket list.

It wasn’t easy to choose the final list, even back then – I could have filled it twice over with places I wanted to visit, skills I wanted to learn or materialistic things I thought I wanted to own.  However, when it came down to it, the original final list was quite reflective of me – at the time.  I was a ‘soft’ adventurer, rather than hard-core (yet still taking me out of my comfort zone) and I love the natural and historic world, rather than festivities and lots of people (unless it’s a rugby tournament).  I like to spark my imagination, but I also want to help educate the world – particularly under-privileged girls.

The challenges also reflected many of my childhood interests and aspirations – places in my favourite books, becoming a teacher, using the languages I learned at school and continuing to write fiction.  I’ve always strived to achieve, so there are some ultimate dreams of ‘best-seller’ and ‘award-winning’. Some of the challenges involved glitz and glamour , and some involve camping rough, donning a hammer and quite possibly shovelling animal manure (none of these things I do very often as an adult – apart from DIY).

Then there was new personal challenges have come to the forefront of my mind – helping people overcome the loss of loved ones, livelihoods and their homes, coping with sudden tragedy, and finally, finishing off a few of the trips that my Mum had planned to do in the coming few years.

The original 62 challenges can be read here.