Living Life Fully, Six Months at a Time

Written by Osayi Endolyn Wednesday, January 18 2012

Here’s the first thing you notice about Jacqueline Boone: she looks like a person who loves her life. Smiling wide with a warm voice and firm handshake, her presence is both inviting and commanding. You would expect as much from the creator of “6 Months to Live,” a two-year-old blog dedicated to living life fully, now on its way to becoming a Web-based TV show.

“I’ve learned that life is whatever you want it to be,” she says. “I want to share that with others.”

The story, well known by her readers, goes something like this: in 2009, Boone attended a conference in San Francisco, where the author Teresa Rodriguez Williamson posed a striking question: What would you do differently if you knew you’d die in six months?

Boone’s first thought was that she wouldn’t change a thing. Her life was fine. Then she thought about it further. Boone realized that even though her life was “good,” a sense of meaning, of greater purpose, seemed lacking. So she began what she calls a “life experiment,” to shift the way she approached living. It might sound odd to some, but she wanted to feel alive. Under no duress of poor health, with no impending tragedy in sight, Boone took it upon herself to savor everything that came her way. The blog would serve as a witness to her journey and development. This was a new endeavor, but Boone was no stranger to adventure.

Born and raised in Atlanta, GA, Boone attended Boston University where she majored in English. She studied abroad in Spain; interned for InStyle Magazine, PINK and Atlanta Woman; and worked as a wilderness counselor to high school students over the summer. But it was a 15-day trip to Israel that sparked an opening in the way Boone perceived the world.

Boone says, “I visited Jerusalem, Hebron, Ramallah, Bethlehem — I got an awareness that I just didn’t have before, growing up in Atlanta. This was just a completely different experience of the world. It changed me.”

After completing her degree in Boston, Boone followed up on an email from World Teach, a Harvard-affiliated volunteer organization that places participants in developing countries for one year. She signed up to teach English in southern Hunan, where she was the only woman in her group of five American teachers, didn’t speak the language and wasn’t familiar with local customs.

And she liked it so much she stayed in China for two more years. She learned Mandarin and got work teaching at universities and providing cross-cultural training for global entities like Bel Power and Cisco. After three years on the mainland, she decided it was time to repatriate. Not long after that, she was asked to look at her life through the lens of six months.

“I’d always wanted to move to San Francisco, so I did,” Boone says. “I had $1000 in my checking account. When I got my job I was down to $250. But you know — in America we only celebrate rebellion if it’s successful. I started to really ask, what in our society makes a life successful?”

She goes on, “We tend to feel uncomfortable when we enter a limbo period, when we don’t know what to do next. But limbo is the space of creation. You need to have space and nothingness to be comfortable with not knowing.” It’s a perspective Boone tries to remind herself of regularly. With aims to expand the “6 Months to Live” brand and take its growing popularity to the next level with the launch of the Web TV show, Boone is sometimes amazed at the amount of work ahead. But she is enthusiastic and dedicated.

In the beginning of Boone’s life experiment, she was focused mostly on herself. She has found over time, an interest in shifting the focus away from her own experiences to highlighting those around her who are living their own meaningful lives. Boone plans to feature both everyday people and public figures on the “6 Months to Live” Web TV show, including Ben Lack, CEO of The Daily Energy Report and blogger Currie Rose of “Based on a True Story.”

Boone sought financial support for producing the show through Kickstarter.org, a website creatives use to invite people to fund projects. If a project doesn’t get enough pledges within a certain amount of time, it is not funded at all. “6 Months to Live” surpassed its goal, perhaps signaling future viewers’ desire to see how others are living a life of purpose.

“The most courageous thing a person can do is to be who they are,” Boone says. “To deal with your own inhibitions and fears is very difficult. At the end of the day it’s not about having the people who don’t get it ‘get it.’ It’s about living a meaningful life. Even if it’s something small, it’s yours.”

---

Osayi Endolyn is a California native living in Atlanta, GA. She received her BA in French from UCLA and is earning an MFA in writing from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her work has been featured in Atlanta INtown Paper, SCAD’s graduate writing journal Document and Quilt Stories, a podcast series inspired by the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Her art criticism essay was selected for publication in Feminist Art Workers: A History, slated for 2012 publication. Endolyn was recently awarded a writing residency from the Grinnell Area Arts Council in Iowa, where she continued work on her first book, a creative nonfiction look at the culture of the US Marine Corps.