Years ago, having read Jack Canfield’s Success Principles, Walt and I sat in Ireland and composed our list of goals. We were on our honeymoon and, well, this is just the sort of thing one does on a honeymoon. Anyway, the assignment, as Jack put it, was to create a list of the 101 things you want to do, be, or have before you die.

Believe me, this task isn’t as easy as it sounds. At the time, I could only think up 87 items. I sat in the grass under the September sun and racked my brain. The problem, particularly back then, was a limited imagination for what I could create in my life. I didn’t want for much, which I assumed made me morally superior. Except NOT.

If you can’t imagine it, well, you can’t achieve it. So there’s that.

Walt and I have come off of another incredible year of growth. We’ve enjoyed real success in our business and traveled around the world like it’s our job. (Fuck you, Evil Eye, I’m not listening to you!)

“Did you ever envision this being our life?” I asked him, which I’m prone to do. Like I mentioned last week, we’re wintering in Argentina because it’s summer here and the days are long and the internet connection is good and we’ve got loads of mountains in our backyard to scale. I’m all about 68-degree Fahrenheit weather and 18-hour days. Call me silly.

Because we’ve spent a hell of a lot of time imagining precisely what it is that we want, putting a plan in place to go after it all, making very real choices, the answer was, “Yes.”

Curious if I’d ticked off items on that Honeymoon bucket list, I tracked the thing down.

I’m astounded by what I read a dozen or so years later, mostly because my focus and values have changed over time. And some things I’ve given up trying to accomplish. Me centered? Umm, probably not going to happen.

Like snooping through a medicine cabinet, or rifling through bookshelves, you can tell a lot about a person by looking at her goals. Some of these items make me cringe to read out loud, but whatever, I’m going to share it anyway. Judge me if you will.

For fun, I bolded all of the items I’ve completed.

* Run another marathon
* Finish a sprint triathlon
* Finish an olympic triathlon
* A half ironman
* A full ironman
* Bike across Spain
* Bike across Vietnam
* Spend 3 months in Australia
* Rent a house for 3 months in Bali
* Own a house like Derrylea in Cork, Ireland
* Finish my book and publish it
* Start a blog
* Get an essay published in the NY Times
* Be reviewed in the NY Times
* Speak at a commencement ceremony
* Be on Oprah
* Weigh 113 lbs.
* Enter a Beauty Pageant
* Have no debt
* Be on the NY Times Best Seller List
* Scuba dive in Bali
* Learn to surf
* Go to a publishing/writer party
* Do a book tour
* Become an argentine tango champion
* Fly a helicopter
* Take a houseboat tour of India
* Do 10 days of Vipasana mediation at a retreat
* Hike in Nepal
* Teach a class at Bread Loaf
* Study Tango for 3 months in Argentina
* Visit New Zealand
* Get paid to read my writing to an audience
* Get an agent
* Have a top tier publishing house court me
* Kayak the islands of Maine
* Visit Washington State and Oregon
* Have an eternity pool
* Bike the Great Wall of China
* Motorcycle in Montana
* Get accepted into an amazing writer’s conference
* Be Oprah’s book of the month author
* Have an article published in Oprah Magazine
* Have two million dollars or better in our retirement account
* Lean to speak as well as Jim Rohn
* Create a book of photos and stories with Walt
* Have three separate residences in different countries, spending time each year in them
* Whiten my teeth
* Have skin treatments that will make me look 10 years younger
* Have the youthfulness and vitality of Suzanne Summers
* Speak at a writer’s symposium
* Publish a collection of essays
* Have a movie adapted from one of my books
* Have a top-end classic Mercedes
* Visit Rome and Florence
* Hike the interior of Iceland
* Sell Cedar Glen
* Do the Appalachian Trail from start to finish
* Have a spotless garage to park my car in
* Explore Morocco
* Become organized
* Ski out West
* Become well versed in Shakespeare
* Read the one hundred  most influential books
* Get to a point where I can have facials and massages once a week
* Have a closet full of banging clothes
* Hire a personal shopper/stylist
* Have staff
* Show up on the back page of Runner’s World
* Wear a size 2 (really a size 2)
* Create an e-book for the best vegan dinners
* Spend a weekend per year alone with each of my kids
* Spend a week at The Red Rock Spa in Utah
* Write an Adventure Travelogue and publish it
* Develop a talk about finding our authentic voice for girls and women
* Sail our boat without help to Block Island
* Learn to swim the crawl for a mile without getting winded
* Scuba off of Zanzibar
* Win a Pushcart Prize for literature
* Visit South Africa
* Start my own writers’ workshop
* Have an outstanding relationship with my kids and step-kids
* Climb the tallest mountain in Greenland with the boys
* Hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
* Fly fish
* Study with Cormac McCarthy and Anne Lamott
* Do the Pilgrim’s walk across Spain
* Get  Fulbright scholarship
* Get a writer’s grant
* Sing in public to applause
* Be totally centered (ahahahaha!)
* Sail the Greek islands
* Visit the Dalmatian coast
* Start an Adventure club/Mastermind group
* Lead mountain climbing tour up Kilimanjaro
* Embrace my juiciness
* Summit Aconcagua
* Paraglide
* Climb all seven summits

What’s on your bucket list? Would you find this exercise difficult to do?