Bucket List
Peace Corps can grant volunteers with a very liberal schedule (depending on your placement and work assignment). Depending on how lazy a volunteer chooses to be, it might be possible to achieve a service comprised of 98% free time. I, however, have worked hard to stay busy and start projects within my community. That being said, I still have a lot of free time. I’ve tried to fill that free time with self-improvement activities. I’ve always tried to consciously improve how I live. From diet and exercise to productivity and relationships, I’m always searching for ways to make my life just a little bit better. In Burkina, I workout a ton, force myself into new experiences, read classic and not-so-classic literature, and have digested a lot of self-help and motivational material via books and podcasts.
One of those classic motivational ideas is “to live as if you only have one year left to live” or some other variant there of. After coming across this idea again and again and then listening to a podcast that challenged listeners to write a bucket list, I decided to do just that. I made a list of the 100 things I would like to do before I die. At just barely 26 years old, I’ve already managed to live a rather amazing life. I’ve camped on the Great Wall of China, completed over 20 dives in the Great Barrier Reef, spent three days solo hiking across a tropical island, free dove with whales, paddled a week through the Everglades, had a tiger die in my arms, and lived a year in a rural African village. I love adventure and trying new things, but it’s still really hard to think of 100 things! The following is the list I came up with, in the order I originally generated. Some are odd and completely off the wall, but this is my list:
- Train karate for one month in Okinawa, Japan
- Rebuild a three-person sleeper sailboat
- Learn to sail
- Spend a month island hopping in a sailboat
- Skydive
- Hike Appalachian Trail
- Compete in Cross Fit games
- Be able to bend over, legs straight, and place my hands on the floor
- Write a New York Times bestseller
- Create a documentary
- Travel the Amazon by boat
- Spend two weeks in nature in complete solitude
- Learn to breakdance then take part in a dance battle
- Own only 100 things for three months
- Have dinner with the current President
- Appear on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox as an “expert” in my field
- Appear on the cover of Men’s Health, Fortune, or Esquire magazine
- Cage dive with great white sharks
- See a gorilla in nature
- Hike for a week in Glacier National Park
- Compete in an Olympic games
- Learn Arabic
- Backpack across Europe
- Spend time living in rural France
- Learn Chinese
- Live in Australia
- Invent something and patent it
- Learn to play poker well, then win a poker tournament
- See all the safari big five mammals in Africa
- Learn to write perfectly with my left hand
- Visit Antarctica
- Make it to basecamp on Mt. Everest
- Be happily married
- Be featured in National Geographic
- Eat blowfish sushi
- Drink the world’s most expensive coffee
- Learn to play the mandolin
- Speak on the Senate floor
- Get a Ph.D.
- Be a professor at an ivy league school
- Explore Patagonia
- Climb Half Dome
- Study Buddhism in Asian temple
- Learn kickboxing in Thailand
- Own a Tesla Roadster
- Have a house that surpasses LEED platinum certification
- Learn Japanese
- Be fluent in French
- Study Brazilian jujitsu in Brazil
- Sail the Mediterranean
- Learn to do a backflip
- Do 20 consecutive handstand pushups
- Build a custom bicycle from the ground up
- Restore a classic motorcycle
- Give $100,000 to a charity
- Buy a forested area, grassland, or wetland to protect
- Have a bust of myself made
- Learn how to sword fight
- Push the button for a controlled demolition of a 5+ story building
- Have laser eye surgery
- Explore Aztec ruins
- Complete an intensive survival course
- Build a piece of furniture
- Backpack across India
- Win a Nobel Prize
- Have cosmetic oral surgery
- Learn to swim really well
- Ride a horse long distance across Mongolia
- Learn Spanish
- Write a cookbook that yields $10,000 in profit
- Own a saddleback briefcase
- Complete a Tough Mudder-type race
- Go to space
- Learn to shoot a longbow with deadly accuracy at 100 yards
- Learn the art of bonsai
- Learn to start a fire from scratch
- Visit Northern Africa (Egypt, Morocco)
- Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro
- Get a tattoo
- Drink my way across the Bourbon Trail
- Throw the opening pitch for a MLB game
- Compete in a MMA fight
- Fast for 3 days
- Catch a yellow fin tuna
- Visit all 50 states
- Learn to surf in Hawaii
- See an active volcano
- Explore the Galapagos Islands
- Bike across America
- Drink nothing but juice for a month
- Write an autobiography
- See a tiger in the wild
- Spend one month in Spain
- Go to a Super Bowl
- Sit on Millionaires Row for the Derby and take part in the related parties
- Visit the North Pole
- Spend three months in China
- Value friends and experience over things
- Have no regrets
- Be happy
