This picture doesn’t have much to do with anything, but I love it too much not to share. Taken by my friend Stacey.
Like most of the rest of the internet, I’ve read Maggie’s blog for years and followed along with her Life List adventures, admiring the well-lived life she was creating. I’ve never been short on goals for myself, so until recently I hadn’t gone to the trouble of drafting up my own life list. But with all the emotional upheaval of the year including my need to cope with my mental illness, I thought it was time to sit down and think seriously again about the life I want to be living and how I’m going to get myself there.
Here, in no particular order, are 101 things I want to do with my life:
Have a gallery show
Learn to swim
Take dance classes
Record a song
Learn to speak French
Learn to speak Italian
Write two novels
Write a memoir
Keep chickens
Keep bees
Make my own cheese
Make my own pasta
Have an orchard
Custom build a home
Host a writers retreat
Learn to draw
Run a 5K
Get involved in the community
Create a network of friends that are like family
Learn to play the piano
Learn to play the guitar
Teach Atticus to read
Fully decorate a home
Fix up my teeth
Build a bedframe
Write a craft book
Be happy with my body
Have a closet full of clothes I love
Know how to style my hair
Learn how to best apply makeup
Have a guest house
Become financially independent
Visit all seven continents
Visit all 50 states
Ride in a hot air balloon
Go skydiving
Have a summer home
Hike half dome
Go to all the local agricultural festivals
Enter something in the fair
See Mt Rushmore and the Grand Canyon
Spend a week in NY seeing shows and eating fabulous meals
Get better at photography
Cook at home every night for six months
Design a line of crosstitch patterns
Find my sport
Add to our family
Get really good at making bread
Go canoeing with the family
Go camping
Host a Christmas home tour
Make the Marbek nativity
Make a closet full of homemade quilts
Give a reading
Tell a story on the moth
Act in a play
Put on a one woman show
Make something in a collaborative project
Help Atticus become independent
Read every book on my bookshelf
Take up painting
Go snorkeling
Go birdwatching
Visit a black sand beach
Do a run for CP with Atti
Go on tour
Watch AFI’s top 100 films
Read every Pulitzer prize winning book in print
Have a hammock in my backyard
Make a grass couch
See the Northern Lights
Walk the great wall
Walk (at least part of) the appalachian trail
Be in a movie
Complete some kind of 365 project
Go to a charity ball
Ride in a gondola
Go skiing
Take a pottery class
Blow glass
Make a significant change in the world
Go to a film festival
Catch a taping of SNL
Drive Route 66
Give someone a job
Eat at the French Laundry
Eat at WD-50
Ride a bike in a resort town
See tulips in Holland
Taste balsamic vinegar in Modena
See bioluminescent algae
Go on a photo safari
Get out of debt
Perform music with Atti
Spend a whole day reading with Atti
Take Atti to a real concert
Go to the Oscars
Take a salsa class with Jared
Get accepted to a prestigious writers retreat
Drive through a redwood tree
Fix up my eating habits
This was such a great exercise, to think expansively about the kind of person I want to be and the life I want to make for my family. But the best part of it was gaining an appreciation for the life I’ve already lived. As I surfed around on line looking for inspiration, I was struck over and over again with how many things on other people’s lists that I’ve already done. I’ve had a pretty great, fully lived, life. And that’s exactly the perspective I was needing.