A list for life

Stealing ideas isn't on the list below, but if it was, I could cross it off already.

Playing off Amy's adaptation of MightyGirl's posts, I've started compiling a Life List, or whatever. Essentially, things I'd like to have accomplished before I die. Some are trivial, some are life-changing. Some are much easier to accomplish than others, but none are, to me, unrealistic. (That was sort of my guiding principal: If it's next to impossible, it doesn't make the list.)

Anyway, my goal is to reach a hundred items. Below, you'll find the first 50. I'm already at work on the next 50, but think if I kept going at this point, the items would get a little less substantial, and I don't want that. So, without further ado, and in no particular order other than that which they popped into my head:

1. Be a great dad.
2. Coach my kid's sports team.
3. Visit South Africa.
4. Attend a World Cup.
5. Attend a Winter Olympics.
6. Have a beer in a beachside bar on at least six of the seven continents.
7. Smoke a Cuban cigar.
8. Meet Amy Sedaris.
9. Fall madly in love, even if it doesn't last.
10. Make it last.

11. Learn to expertly cook Chinese food.
12. Spend a week's vacation completely off the grid, sans phone, web, outside contact.
13. Stay in a hotel built into a cave or mountain.
14. Renovate a house so perfectly, that I'll never want to move ever again.
15. Design a magazine cover for something actually sold on newsstands.
16. Tag along for at least a few days with a band on tour.
17. Have a photograph published in a magazine.
18. Camp in the mud at the Glastonbury festival.
19. Swim in the Black Sea.
20. Visit Russia.

21. Visit Antarctica and take pictures of penguins.
22. Live in England for at least a year.
23. Take my mom on a trip to Alaska.
24. Have a well-trained dog.
25. Find a reason to smile, every day.
26. Make a portrait of a random person in every one of the 50 states.
27. Run a half-marathon.
28. Own a house with hardwood floors.
29. Be somebody's hero.
30. Sing Christmas carols with my family.

31. Drink Absinthe in France.
32. Write a book.
33. Come on down, on The Price is Right.
34. Watch Letterman from the studio audience.
35. Strike up a conversation with someone who completely intimidates me.
36. Ice skate under the stars, holding someone's hand, while wearing a scarf.
37. Trace my family's roots to the point of standing exactly where a relative lived more than 100 years ago.
38. Make a New Year's resolution and actually keep it.
39. Bid on something -- and win -- at a real auction (like with paddles and such).
40. Stay up all night talking on the beach.

41. Find a family camping destination that becomes a summer tradition.
42. Stomp grapes.
43. Buy a bespoke suit on Savile Row.
44. Catch a fish and eat it for dinner.
45. Plant a garden.
46. Learn how to change a tire.
47. Visit a foreign country with no plans, no reservations and just a backpack.
48. See the Northern Lights.
49. Spend a week on a houseboat.
50. Lose 75 pounds.

The next batch will come before too long. In the meantime, share yours!

Comments

[tiff]

i'm inspired. we miss you!

[Lancaster]

I won't waste your bandwidth with a full list, but here's a taste:

1. Be a better husband than I was yesterday (consider this a goal that renews on a daily basis).

2. Be a dad.

3. Spend more time with people I love and less time with those I don't.

4. Live long enough to see my as-now-conceptual children grow up and chase their own dreams. Failing that, give them an example of a life well-lived.

5. Complete my weight-loss goal, then stay there.

6. See Alaska again.

7. Eventually see NYC. It's amazing to me that I've lived as long as I have without doing so.

8. Always comfortable, never complacent.

9. Learn how to make sushi.

10. Say a line in a major motion picture.

[AFong]

Dude! Here's a couple:

1. Make a record and release it on the Internet. Hope fallout does not equal Heidi Montag's foray into the music industry. Must dodge having a svengali like Spencer.

2. Write a novel.

3. Get a PHD so people will have to call me "doctor." Actually, that's my joke one, but grad school is on the mind for the distant future.

4. Finally learn how to play this thing we call "jazz," including those -- in Welton's words -- "non sequitur sax bloops in a 'Love Supreme.'"

5. Live in New York.

6. Learn to read Chinese and learn to speak it better.

7. Speaking of Chinese, to protest an Amy Tan book signing, release or something with a splinter protest group I'd call the "Yellow Panthers." If I can call her an imperialist to her face just once, my life will be complete. And really, she needs to get rid of those bangs.

8. Lose weight, be healthy.

9. Age gracefully, that is, pray that my flip-flopping on smooth jazz (from hate to "Oh, that's relaxing while I take a bath and eat ice cream") is the last of middle age's salvo against my youthful ideals.

10. Finally grow substantial facial hair, a genetically impossible feat for me.