Seems easy, right? Especially since I've already done it. It's down there at the bottom right-hand side of this webpage, and has been for a couple of years now.
But wait a minute. That's not all. According to the directions, you're not just supposed to create the bucket list. You're supposed to pick one item on it and actually do something that gets the ball rolling on it.
I was intrigued by the idea that you should have different categories in your bucket list: travel, relationships, career, finances, education, health, etc. What I've got is basically just travel-oriented stuff. Some hobbies and geek-outs, too.
But most importantly, my old bucket list is waaaaaaaaaay out of date. I threw together in I knocked a few things off of it last year — grow a beard, eat a scorpion, start home brewing and buy a pipe, among others — but there are some items which don't really apply anymore. I've since learned that living in Japan isn't the best way to make money, so that's gone. And there are some things I really must add to the list, too, and other items which I must clarify or refine.
So! New-and-improved bucket list below. Check it out:
TRAVEL:
1. go on a long sailing voyage
2. visit New York City
3. travel by train across Australia
4. traverse Central Asia overland
5. take the train from Beijing, China to St. Petersburg, Russia
6. stargaze under a Class 1 sky on the Bortle scale
7. stay in a five-star hotel
8. set foot in Antarctica
9. view both the aurora borealis and the aurora australis
10. go to a jimjilbang (Korean bathhouse)
11. explore Gangwon Province
12. swim in the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan
13. see Pyongyang from the ground and the air
14. safari in Uganda
15. gaze upon the some of the world's most exotic mountain ranges
16. eat bouillabaisse in Marseilles
17. trek through Patagonia (not all the way, just a picturesque chunk of it)
FINANCES:
1. pay off my college loans (significantly less than $10,000 remaining)
2. save enough money for car payments and stateside rent
CAREER:
1. continue my flight training: tailwheel, high-performance, multi-engine, floatplane, and possibly instrument ratings, plus a commercial pilot's license
2. conquer my fear of stalls and spins in airplanes
3. get my first novel published this year
4. e-publish my 2012 NaNoWriMo project
5. sell at least ten or twelve more travel articles before I die (enough for an anthology)
6. write a travelogue or two, in the style of Mark Twain or Paul Theroux
7. become an established short science fiction writer
8. find work as a talk radio host back in the U.S.A.
9. get a job that keeps me in Scotch, guns, and airplane fuel
10. own a bar (gastropub) in my declining years, either in Alaska or Chile
RELATIONSHIPS/FAMILY:
1. marry the love of my life (Miss H)
2. honeymoon somewhere tropical
3. produce two or three children
4. cultivate a thoroughly weird family with plenty of hobbies, athletic activities, goofy traditions, beloved rituals, and fun customs from overseas, like Burns suppers
MISCELLANY:
1. build a fire on a rainy day
2. fly upside-down
3. buy my very own seaplane
4. take up black powder shooting
5. acquire an impressive gun collection: I'd say a Stoeger coach gun, a Remington 870, a CZ P-07 Duty, a pair of Uberti-built Colt .36-caliber Navy revolvers, and a Springfield M1903 will do for starters
6. finish learning Korean, brush up on Spanish, and dabble in Japanese, German and Swahili
7. familiarize myself with physics
8. ride an elephant
9. compete on an episode of Jeopardy!
10. get in shape and stay in shape
11. try my hand at boxing
And there you have it! That's all I could think of. Believe it or not, the list you just read is the inside of my head: the dreams that have been bouncing off the inside of my skull since I was ten years old and younger. It's different from the "master to-do list" which you'll find at the top of the page; a lot of that stuff isn't imperative. I'm not sure I want to fly for money anymore. But you can thank Mark Twain, Lafcadio Hearn, Paul Theroux, Steve Irwin, Chris and Martin Kratt, Marty Stouffer, David Attenborough, Steven Spielberg, Frederick Townsend Ward, Wiley Post, Mort Mason, and every other TV host, film director, writer, adventurer, pilot, traveler or mercenary whose work I read or watched and admired for putting all these fancy ideas into my head.
We shall continue tomorrow with Day 13. I still haven't memorized that dang poem yet, but I figure as long as I do it before the month's out, nobody will be the wiser. Except you. 'Cause I just told you.
Postie out.
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