Dana laid her pen down and sat back in her chair, sighing with the relief of completing her list. It had been a conversation with Frank that had led to this impulse to give form to her thoughts about her life and what she hesitated to refer to as its direction.

It had been bothering her for a while that there was a lot about her life that seemed to be “business as usual”; just a daily drudge of get up, wash, eat, go to work, come home, eat, wash and sleep. Every now and again there was some sex, and even less often there was a decent conversation or a really great movie or a genuinely engaging book, but more often than not these things were rare.

She was going to be thirty and what had she actually done? More to the point, what did she want to do? That was the crux of it, more than anything else she was disconcerted by her apparent lack of dreams. Frank had suggested that she take some time, quietly, to sit with pen and paper and write a list of things that she really wanted to do, no matter how large or small.