My Life List

A few summers ago, I found myself shiftless and unemployed, having recently quit my job at the Center for the Homeless to go to law school, and then deciding not to go to law school after all. I was thinking a lot about what I wanted to do in life and what would give me personal fulfillment, so I started a Life List.

A friend recently mentioned that the movie The Bucket List was playing here in Cairo, which is about two dying men crossing off their lists of things to do before they die. This made me think of my own Life List and I searched the house looking for the scrap of paper where I’d started writing goals down several years ago. I realized that since writing it, I’ve actually fulfilled a few items. I thought I’d share my Life List with you. The checked red items are in progress or done.

• Write and publish a book – children’s book, travel book, novel, anything will do really
• Visit Alaska
• Learn to play classical guitar well – I took a class last year and got up to a few basic songs and playing the blues but I’m not to “well” yet
• Get my black belt – I’m at purple right now and on hiatus for a while
• Get a graduate degree
• √ Be published in a magazine – I was just published in Sunstone Magazine’s January issue with a blog post I wrote here and on By Common Consent. When I put this on my Life List, I was thinking more of journalist-type writing than creative writing, but hey, I’ll take it. It was pretty cool to see my name in print.
• Master a full meal for every major ethnic food category – I’m talking appetizer, soup/salad, main course + sides, and dessert. I can do snippets here and there, but I’m nowhere near completion. I may sign up for a Thai cooking class this month, so hopefully I can get a move on this.
• √ Show paintings in a show – accomplished at Art Beat 2006 in South Bend. I only sold one painting, but it was still fun. I’m showing a whole new set at an art bazaar here in Cairo at the end of this month. I’ll let you know how that goes.
• √ Wear a Notre Dame shirt in Ireland – accomplished August 2007
• Learn to scuba dive
• Have a darkroom in my home
• Teach my kids to love books
• Write a family history
• Learn how to surf
• Do community theater
• Make a coffetable book of photos that I’ve taken
• Start an internet business
• Keep a travel journal with every place I’ve visited – so far so good. I even had Rick Steves autograph it when I met him. He signed the page that mentioned us dropping his guidebook down the side of a hill in Assisi and running after it.
• Be able to look at things and say “I can make that”
• Have a warm, welcoming home
• √ Visit the Holy Land – we want to go back though since we didn’t have time to go north to Galilee
• Drive the Pacific Coast Highway
• √ Never go a day without saying I love you to every person in my family
• √ Learn to sail – accomplished summer 2006, haven’t done it since
• See the aurora borealis
• Take an Americana roadtrip – I’ve been planning this one for years. I’ll hit all the states (not at once, this can be broken up over several roadtrips) and visit things like giant balls of yarn and the best cornbread in the country, etc. The pictures would make a good subject for my coffeetable photography book.
• Go to a black tie event where I have to wear a gown
• Work on a political campaign – you’d think I would have done this one by now
• Learn to throw pottery – and not just at the wall
• Watch the AFI top ten movies of all time: Citizen Kane, Casablanca √, The Godfather√, Gone With the Wind √, Lawrence of Arabia √, The Wizard of Oz √, The Graduate, On the Waterfront, Schindler’s List, and Singing in the Rain √.
• Learn to bake a good loaf of bread
• Have a romantic trip to Paris – the last one was, shall we say, not so romantic. We need a do-over.
• Visit a glass blowing factory on Murano (Italy)
• Have an extensive collection of spices and know how to use them
• Learn to play piano with both hands
• Go to Machu Picchu
• Rent a Vespa in Europe
• √ Have an herb garden – accomplished in South Bend. It was great to go out back and grab a handful of herbs to throw into dinner. Of course, it would have helped if I’d labeled where I’d planted what seeds. Once they started to sprout, I was out there with pictures from Wikipedia trying to figure out what was what.
• Visit Greek islands
• √ and finally….See a pyramid! – on my list, I write “a” pyramid, rather than “the” pyramids because I wanted to be realistic and didn’t think I’d actually ever make it all the way to Egypt, so I was willing to settle for pyramids in Mexico. Little did I know.

Speaking of which, here is video of us inside the pyramid at Dashur last week. Video evidence of a Life List item crossed off.

Sooo, what’s on your Life List?