Writing a Not-a-Bucket List

I’ve gone through my life steal­ing the best ideas of my friends. Any­thing inter­est­ing I’ve done has been some­one else’s plan first. How­ever, it’s always worked for me, so I’m not about to change my strategy.

I’ve taken some time this week (and again in Decem­ber 2009) to re-evaluate my sense of what I enjoy doing and have writ­ten it down as a life list. Here are the 62 ideas I’ve had so far.

This is a list of goals, but it is NOT a bucket list. Why? it’s not a list of things I think I have to do to-have-lived-a-good-life list. It’s just a list of  just some things I’d like to do. Things are things I think I’d ENJOY doing (I think goals can actu­ally get in the way of enjoy­ment.) So this isn’t a bucket list. It’s just a list of fun things I’d like to do.

So ah-hem, I’d like to:

1. Learn to play the gui­tar, write a good song and sing it. Sta­tus update: We just won a gui­tar in a Christ­mas raf­fle.
2. Help build a com­mu­nity cen­tre or a school.
3. Throw a party on a trop­i­cal island (Thahiti anyone?)
4. Write a book that I’m proud to recommend.
5. Visit 100 coun­tries (37 to go)
6. Become flu­ent in 5 lan­guages (5 minute con­ver­sa­tions). Update: Liv­ing in Brus­sels now, so watch­ing TV in Flem­ish and gro­cery shop­ping in French. Baby steps.
7. Go to the Olympics
8. Vol­un­teer after a nat­ural disaster
9. Climb the Syd­ney Har­bour Bridge
10. Run a marathon. Update: Done! I ran the Toronto marathon with my friend Peter Nose­wor­thy and fin­ished in the more-or-less-adequate-for-an-unfit-guy time of 4 hours and 15 min­utes. Never again.
11. Paint an abstract paint­ing that looks expen­sive (or at least looks good). Update: tak­ing some art les­son one Sat­ur­day a month.
12. Give a nearly per­fect speech and/or get a stand­ing ovation
13. Scuba dive some­where amaz­ing. Update: Done! Bet­tina and I went to Figi and found a guy who let me scuba dive alone through caves and coral. He didn’t tell me he was going to aban­don me down there, but it’s hard to argue with a guy using scuba sign lan­guage, 30 feet under water.
    
14. Be acknowl­edged or thanked in a book
15. Fly a plane
16. Build a piece of fur­ni­ture. Update: Does Ikea count?… No? Oh.
17. Host a fun fam­ily reunion
18. Kite surf (with­out look­ing foolish)
19. Walk or cycle across a coun­try Update: What was I think­ing when I wrote this one?!
20. Run for a gov­ern­ment office Update: Ditto #19
21. Help on a sus­tain­able build­ing project
22. Raise $10,000 for a good cause. Update: Some real progress on this one. Bet­tina and I have started to get involved in Kiva, mak­ing small donations/loans to aspir­ing small-business own­ers in devel­op­ing countries.
23. Cook a roman­tic five-course din­ner for my wife
24. Go on a week-long sail­ing trip
25. Fly or boat to Antarctica
26. Build (and sleep overnight in) a hut made of sticks and leaves
27. Help to change a law
28. Do an ori­en­teer­ing race
29. Raise a chicken
30. Have a veg­etable garden
31. Build a wood oven
32. Swim with sharks
33. Spend a night in the outback
34. Plant 1000 2600 trees Update: I real­ized I need to plant at least this many to cover my car­bon foot­print
    
35. Design and build a dream house (prefer­ably my dream house, but my wife’s dream house would do)
36. Make fire by rub­bing sticks together
37. Read the Bible, Quran, the Bha­gavad Gita and Mao’s Lit­tle Red Book Update: So far I have read the Bible. It’s long.
38. Sky­dive and bungee jump
39. Make my own maple syrup
40. Learn to spit fire and do it myself. Prob­a­bly just once.
41. Fly over the Grand Canyon
42. Ride in a fighter jet. Update: Appar­ently in Rus­sia and South Africa go can ride in old fighter jets.
43. Swim with a whale
44. Visit Machu Picchu
45. Go hang glid­ing and paragliding
46. Ride in a hot air balloon
47. Make a piece of pot­tery Update: I have almost fin­ished this one! There is a sweet lit­tle mug half made in an art stu­dio in Brussels.
48. Learn to make a pot of chili that’s so good peo­ple say “wow!”
49. Skate out­side Rock­e­feller Cen­tre at Christ­mas time
50. Enjoy an after­noon of surfing
51. Swim with a dolphin
52. Get another degree (prefer­ably an hon­orary PhD, so I don’t have to come up with any new ideas)
53. Do a fire walk
54. Visit Vic­to­ria Falls (which I believe is some­where on the bor­der of Zam­bia and Zimbabwe)
55. Go to Dis­ney World or Dis­ney Land (or Euro Disney)
56. Ride the scari­est roller­coaster in the world
57. Bring atten­tion to a wor­thy stranger (i.e. see that a good per­son gets a prize they deserve)
58. Men­tor some­one. Done.
59. Hit a home run in a base­ball game again. (Last time I played I struck out more times than I hit the ball).
60. Rebuild an engine
61. Blag an upgrade to First Class. Update: Done. The lovely peo­ple at Delta gra­ciously upgraded us on our honeymoon.
62. Go a week with­out elec­tric­ity (prefer­ably on a canoe trip in North­ern Ontario, or maybe on a sail­ing trip some­where warm).
63. Spend at least a week boat­ing (and snorkelling) around var­i­ous islands in the Caribbean. Bar­ba­dos looks incredible.
64. Ice Fish.
65. Go deep sea fish­ing. Done! I just did this in Zihu­atanejo, Mexico.
66. Take a capoeira les­son
67. Start and develop a suc­cess­ful small business.

I’d love to get some more ideas. As I said at the begin­ning, I’m not good at com­ing up with these on my own. If you have some good ideas for enjoy­able things I could set my mind to, please share them as a com­ment below.

*Or bet­ter yet, do this for your­self and put a link to your site in the com­ment box. Doing this is quite the inspir­ing lit­tle exercise.