In fact one of my friends has actually referred to me as ‘the bucket list guy’, because she’s noticed that I’m steadily doing all the things I want to do, and she isn’t aware of anyone else who is doing the same. I’ve been living this way since 1997 when I walked out of my job.
I have a good, long list. There are lots of boxes already ticked, and I’m ticking the remaining boxes just as fast as I can. This has been a great year for ticking boxes! Here’s just a small subset of the 2009 boxes:
seen Ljubljana in the snow
visited the Postonja Caves
visited Jerusalem and seen all the ‘famous’ sites, room of the Last Supper etc.
walked in Tel Aviv from the Hilton to Jaffa at dusk
visited the ancient stone city of Petra, in Jordan
ridden a camel
enjoyed a business class flight to Australia and back (for one gig!)
taken a helicopter flight over Milford Sound, New Zealand, just as Douglas Adams describes it in ‘Last Chance to See’
stood on a glacier at about 5000 feet above sea level
visited Chicago, and seen the view from the top of the Sears Tower (I like tall structures)
met Ed Zotti
visited Toronto and seen the view from the top of the CN Tower
visited Montreal
visited Saint Petersburg, my first trip to Russia, and seen all the sights there including the Winter Palace, Peterhof etc.
visited Bavaria and Lake Spitzingsee
lost about 10kg in weight (first phase of a longer programme)
completed all steps needed to get my book listed and sold on Amazon
completed two new tunes posted on YouTube
completed one new set of lecture notes for my friends in the magic world
laid the groundwork for new marketing plans that will unfold over the next two years, including finding a new web designer
done about 200 favours for other people (I aim for about 1 per day, but don’t usually manage it)
started work on my new book
performed at the Sunday Times Literary Festival in Oxford (two sell out shows)
been cartoonified in ‘Skeptic’ magazine
completed all the preparatory steps towards about 4 major events planned for next year
transferred my bank accounts to new accounts
got myself set up on Facebook and reached my ‘friends’ target
completed a fun, crazy birthday gift video for a friend of mine, that took about 10 months to plan and complete, and involved compiling video messages from about 80 people around the world
Yes, I do have a list of things I’d like to do in my lifetime. (I prefer not to call it a bucket list because to me that refers to a movie.) It is 100 items long. I was required to write it for a class I took. I dropped the class, but not before I wrote the list.
For what it’s worth here’s a (not so random) sample:
Pay off my bills
Clean the car
Get back my sense of smell
Learn Latin
Write a novel
Get a cranial sacral massage
Move to another country
Get rid of all my books
No, I don’t have a list. I’d like to see the Northern Lights someday, but that’s about it. I find my life to be somewhat unpredictable, so I don’t like to make plans too far in advance or to have goals so strongly set in stone that I can’t change them.
has something similar to that, but it looks like all the goals are so vague. ‘travel’, ‘lose weight’, ‘fall in love’ – which I hate. Have something concrete ‘lose 10 pounds by X’. I also don’t like the idea of having a list, unless the list is to pick only 1 thing to do and attack that.
I actually wrote down such a list about 15 years ago, and saved it to a floppy disk which is now somewhere in a box in my basement with no simple way to access it. However, I know that I have accomplished many of the things on it. Some were specific, like “run a marathon”, “fall in love again”, and “have kids”. Some were general (“travel more”). The one specific one I haven’t come anywhere near trying, much less accomplishing, is “publish a novel”.
I apologise to you, cjepson. I did not mean to give you the impression I was bragging. I’m sorry it came across like that. I’ve had a wonderfully lucky year and I suppose I just felt enthused to share some of the good news.
I was going to link to that, glad someone else did.
My list is on 43things, mainly as a handy place to keep it and to remind me what’s on there. All of those are things I feel I can do, and want to do, however, except for 2 that have been removed as “unsuccessful” the list hasn’t changed at all since I made it.
Next time you’re in the Philadelphia area, go to Eastern State Penitentiary. It’s open to the public and is quite an experience… it reminded me of dream imagery, wandering through this empty, ruined prison.
the list hasn’t changed at all since I made it.