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Writing

Bucket List

July 5, 2011

About two years ago, having read Jack Canfield’s Success Principles, Walt and I sat in Ireland and composed our list of goals.  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.


I dug the list out the other day after one of my friends questioned the ability to come up with 101 items. Believe me, this task isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Now, looking at the thing, I’m astounded by what I read.  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, particularly numbers 16 and 17, make me cringe to read out loud. I’m not sure I like what they say about my value system. But, here we go.

I’d like to note two things.  The first time I did this exercise, I only thought up 87.  The last few items I added during the past week. Which is cool, because the idea is to keep the list active.  To replace the goals you’ve accomplished with something fresh.  The second, those in bold I can check off as completed.

  1. Run another marathon
  2. Finish a sprint triathlon
  3. Finish an olympic triathlon
  4. A half ironman
  5. A full ironman
  6. Bike across Spain
  7. Bike across Vietnam
  8. Spend 3 months in Australia
  9. Rent a house for 3 months in Bali
  10. Own a house like Derrylea in Cork, Ireland
  11. Finish my book and publish it
  12. Start a blog
  13. Get an essay published in the NY Times
  14. Be reviewed in the NY Times
  15. Speak at a commencement ceremony
  16. Be on Oprah
  17. Weigh 113 lbs.
  18. Enter a Beauty Pageant
  19. Have no debt
  20. Be on the NY Times Best Seller List
  21. Scuba dive in Bali
  22. Learn to surf
  23. Go to a publishing/writer party
  24. Do a book tour
  25. Become an argentine tango champion
  26. Fly a helicopter
  27. Take a houseboat tour of India
  28. Do 10 days of Vipasana mediation at a retreat
  29. Hike in Nepal
  30. Teach a class at Bread Loaf
  31. Study Tango for 3 months in Argentina
  32. Visit New Zealand
  33. Get paid to read my writing to an audience
  34. Get an agent
  35. Have a top tier publishing house court me
  36. Kayak the islands of Maine
  37. Visit Washington State and Oregon
  38. Have an eternity pool
  39. Bike the Great Wall of China
  40. Motorcycle in Montana
  41. Get accepted into an amazing writer’s conference
  42. Be Oprah’s book of the month author
  43. Have an article published in Oprah Magazine
  44. Have two million dollars or better in our retirement account
  45. Lean to speak as well as Jim Rohn
  46. Create a book of photos and stories with Walt
  47. Have three separate residences in different countries, spending time each year in them
  48. Whiten my teeth
  49. Have skin treatments that will make me look 10 years younger
  50. Have the youthfulness and vitality of Suzanne Summers
  51. Speak at a writer’s symposium
  52. Publish a collection of essays
  53. Have a movie adapted from one of my books
  54. Have a top-end classic Mercedes
  55. Visit Rome and Florence
  56. Hike the interior of Iceland
  57. Sell Cedar Glen
  58. Do the Appalachian Trail from start to finish
  59. Spend a week at a nudist colony
  60. Have a spotless garage to park my car in
  61. Explore Morocco
  62. Become organized
  63. Ski out West
  64. Become well versed in Shakespeare
  65. Read the one hundred  most influential books
  66. Get to a point where I can have facials and massages once a week
  67. Have a closet full of banging clothes
  68. Hire a personal shopper/stylist
  69. Have staff
  70. Stop worrying
  71. Show up on the back page of Runner’s World
  72. Wear a size 2 (really a size 2)
  73. Create an e-book for the best vegan dinners
  74. Spend a weekend per year alone with each of my kids
  75. Spend a week at The Red Rock Spa in Utah
  76. Write an Adventure Travelogue and publish it
  77. Develop a talk about finding our authentic voice for girls and women
  78. Sail our boat without help to Block Island
  79. Learn to swim the crawl for a mile without getting winded
  80. Scuba off of Zanzibar
  81. Win a Pushcart Prize for literature
  82. Visit South Africa
  83. Start my own writers’ workshop
  84. Have an outstanding relationship with my kids and step-kids
  85. Climb the tallest mountain in Greenland with the boys
  86. Hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
  87. Fly fish
  88. Study with Cormac McCarthy and Anne Lamott
  89. Do the Pilgrim’s walk across Spain
  90. Get  Fulbright scholarship
  91. Get a writer’s grant
  92. Sing in public to applause
  93. Be totally centered
  94. Sail the Greek islands
  95. Visit the Dalmatian coast
  96. Start an Adventure club/Mastermind group
  97. Lead mountain climbing tour up Kilimanjaro
  98. Embrace my juiciness
  99. Summit Aconcagua
  100. Paraglide
  101. Climb all seven summits

What’s on your bucket list? Isn’t it time you started one of your own?

 

7 Comments

  • Mia DeBolt says:

    What a great bucket list! Amazing how a list of our greatest desires and wishes for our lives can expand our minds so much… make us want to achieve so much more…. and truly make us want to live our potential! Thank you for sharing your bucket list with me, Ann! I look forward to fulfilling #22 with you someday soon 🙂

  • Amy says:

    “Embrace my juiciness.” Love it.

    I’m going to add “make a bucket list” to my bucket list, so I can cross off at least one thing. Singing in public to thrown tomatoes might be on mine, too.

    Thanks for the inspiration. 🙂

  • Lizz Riley says:

    Wow Ann! I’ve actually been thinking about this bucket list thing lately… time to put pen to paper! I’ll second your #38 I think it was – the infinity pool. <3

    • AnnSheybani says:

      Hop on it there, Pumpkin. You are one of the most achievement oriented people I know. You never fail to astound me. Dreams because reality with you.

  • Bridget says:

    I have actually done a few of these! We must compare our lists!!! So awesome!! 🙂

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