When I was in high school a motivational speaker came to talk to us at a school assembly. He talked about doing something with your life and becoming the person you wanted to be. I was cynical and he was cheesy. I was pretty much throwing up the whole time because he was just so sappy. I knew what he was saying was probably more or less right, I just hated his delivery. At the end of his talk he said something along the lines of, “I dare you to make a list of things you want to accomplish in life. Just by writing that list down you will become [convincing high percentage] more likely to actually accomplish it than the person sitting next to you who doesn’t write that list.”
Well if all I had to do was make a list and it would more or less happen, that wasn’t so hard. I could do that, even if the guy was a total sap-fest.
So I did. Those things on the list have never left my head. They’ve been swirling around haunting and taunting me. One had a time-limit on it in order to get me motivated. Sadly, that time limit has come and gone and I still haven’t achieved it. BUT, I did move much closer to the goal by making choices that moved me in that direction.
This is where I’m going to write about moving towards the things on my Bucket List, the things I want to do before I die. A lot of these things require small achievements before I even get to the final goal. A lot of these things require discipline, which I barely have, and stamina, which I’m working on. A lot of these things have nothing to do with anyone else other than my 16-year-old self dreamed of doing them one day and I don’t want to let her down because I didn’t even try.
Here’s my list. For those of you who know me know that a lot of these things are laugh-worthy. They’re outrageous. But some of the things that are crossed off were also outrageous at one point, too. Getting paid to go to Paris? In my dreams, exactly.
So in no particular order, including the approximate dates in which they were accomplished if they already have been, here’s my list. Read it and laugh, or read it and hope with me.
- Run a marathon
- Climb a small mountain
- Get married (July 30, 2011)
- Have kids
- Go to Paris (February 2010)
- Write a book (Nov 30, 2004)
- Publish a book
- Become fully bilingual (French/English) by the time I was 25 (oops! missed that one).
