My Year of Yellow

My life was consumed in my twenties by my ministry job which was devoted to helping people. It was hard but fulfilling work, and I didn’t have a lot of energy, time, or money outside of it to have much of a life or to develop hobbies. My color-coded schedule in my google calendar represented the major categories of my life: blue for work, red for church, green for finances, and yellow for fun. There was very little yellow in my calendar.

So at the end of my twenties I decided to change that.

I made a long list of things I’d either always wanted to try or activities I wanted to do now that I lived in the city that I lived in. It was sort of a bucket list to bring more “life” into my life. And my calendar added much more yellow in that one year than in the previous five years combined.

That was a fantastic year. Among other adventures, I…

  • got my first professional massage
  • went to my first minor league basketball game
  • floated down my city’s river in an inner tube
  • tried online dating
  • tried painting a large piece of wall art
  • checked out my city’s art museum
  • went to Disneyland for the first time ever
  • visited the FRIENDS TV show set (and got my picture taken on the Central Perk couch)
  • made an apron
  • saw a movie in the park
  • saw a movie in the historical theatre downtown

I didn’t check everything off my list. That wasn’t the point of my year of yellow. The point was to expose myself to fun life experiences that would help balance out the difficult and dutiful parts of my existence. And it did, both in that year and in the options that opened up to me later because of the things I did that year.

My year of yellow brought me more life balance, and while that isn’t possible at all life stages, it was really beneficial to me during that one. I pray that whatever is missing from your life, whether it’s blue, red, green, or yellow, that you may find it, and in finding it that you may find peace, joy, and the opportunity to share that with others.

image: Ryan McGuire of Gratisography