It’s now a new year and already people are well on their way to making and breaking their new year’s resolutions.
Here I am sitting at my laptop in dusty, little old Gympie at the start of 2012 and it makes me wonder how I got here and also of where I was last year. Of how its nearly a year since I moved back to Aus and all the experiences and adventures which have led up to now.
Rather than make a list of resolutions, I decided to make a list. The big list. My 100 list. The things I want to do before I die list, just to put life in perspective.
The whole of 2011 I wanted to be happier, healthier, less stressed and generally have a better balance in my life. But I never thought to plan for it or better yet, ask for it.
I didn’t make it a priority or even have it in front of me as something that not only I wanted to achieve but something that I could achieve.
In fact all my travel has been incidental. Things I have just wanted to do and done. Not part of a any deeper desire other than to just to see and experience the world.
So while making the 100 list I was tempted to put things on there I had already done, which technically would look very impressive on a bucket list, but I decided instead to list the 100 things I want to do and look forward.
It’s easy to look back and think wow, I really did run with bulls in Spain and make it alive into the arena, throw tomatoes at strangers in Valencia and drink a stein at Oktoberfest. I’ve swum on the Amalfi Coast, driven through Tuscan hill sides, ice-skated in central park (a huge list ticker for me), hot air ballooned over the valley of the kings and held a cobra. All experiences which have made me who I am today. All things you look forward to, but once they are done, they are done. You are left enriched by the experience but it leaves room for something else. And all that’s left then is the enduring question of what’s next?
With life as fleeting and unpredictable as it is, I’ve decided to make sure I make the most of it. So in no particular order here is what’s next:
1) Skydive and land on the beach
2) Go great white shark diving
3) Go for a ride in a classic car in Cuba, smoking a Cuban cigar and sipping Havana rum
4) Pose nude for an Art class and keep a copy of one of the works
5) Compete in a triathlon
6) Spend a week in silence
7) Do a burlesque course/class and learn the art of tease
8) Go zorbing
9) Find and complete my family tree – including visiting my family’s town of origin in Tipperary, Ireland
10) Bungee jump into water
11) Do volunteer work at an AIDS orphanage in Africa
12) Visit the wonders of the world I want to see: (Petra, Great Wall of China, Christ Redeemer, Macchu Picchu and Taj Mahal )
13) Own a Queenslander home with my own veggie patch, lemon and lime tree
14) Spend the fourth of July in America
15) Spend a week in Rio celebrating carnevale
16) Do a rock climbing holiday in spain
17) Visit Auchwitz to honour the lives lost there
18) Complete an art class/course and complete a work to hang on my wall (that looks decent!)
19) Eat the worm from a tequila bottle in Mexico
20) Have guacamole in Guatemala
21) Walk barefoot over coals
22) See a grizzly bear in the wild
23) Touch a glacier
24) Take a hula lesson in Hawaii
25) Stand on the edge of a volcano and see and smell the lava
26) See and chase a tornado
27) Lasso someone while riding a horse in Texas
28) Save a life
29) See a polar bear in the wild
30) Take a picnic basket to Yellowstone national park and look for yogi and boo boo
31) Play roulette and take a bet on 16 in Vegas
32) Play a hand of blackjack in Vegas and tell the dealer to ‘hit me’
33) Spend time at a hippie commune with nothing but the clothes on my back
34) Go and dance at a silent disco
35) Perform in a public play
36) Go skinny dipping in the Bahamas
37) Spend a week in a nunnery
38) Run in a marathon – Ultimate would be NYC
39) Spend a night sleeping above water in a glass bottomed villa in the Maldives
40) Trek the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu
41) Spend a night in a haunted house in New Orleans
42) Enter a fire twirling competition
43) Go to Glastonbury
44) Spend a night in a real native American tee pee
45) Go to Vietnam and see the victims of war and enter a Vietcong tunnel
46) Do an intuition course/study to improve understanding of my own intuitive abilities
47) Visit and trek to Everest base camp
48) Learn to ski for the first time and complete a run without falling
49) Swim with a whale shark
50) See the northern lights in Alaska
51) Watch an AFL match live
52) Go see a baseball match in Boston and walk the diamond
53) Go see a Chicago bulls basketball match
54) See Beckham score a goal live
55) Pat a reindeer
56) Feed a crocodile
57) Learn to play the viola and play at least one song
58) Take tango lessons
59) Dance Cuban salsa with Cubans in Havana
60) See a Tucan close up
61) See a live American grid iron match
62) Fly first class
63) Touch a lion
64) Pat a giant tortoise in the Galapagos Islands
65) Drop a message in a bottle into the ocean containing a secret no one else knows
66) Write and finish a book
67) Become a published author
68) Do an African safari and fall asleep listening to hyenas and lions in the night
69) Be a vegan for a week
70) Meet a cannibal
71) Have my photography displayed in a gallery exhibition or published
72) Act out a line from a favourite song
73) Experience in NYC in Autumn and Spring
74) Be vegetarian for a month
75) Take a boat up the amazon river
76) Go whale watching
77) Attend the mardi gras festival in new Orleans
78) Go quad biking
79) Blindfold myself and throw a dart at a map and go to the place it lands
80) Spend a night in an igloo
81) Go swimming with seals
82) Have a full Canadian breakfast in Canada
83) Change a strangers life for the better and ask for nothing in return
84) Streak at a sporting match
85) Do the Kokoda Trail
86) Get a dog of my own and raise it from a puppy
87) See Ayers Rock
88) Say Yes to everything for one whole week
89) Do an epic cross country road trip (US/Aus/ Wherever!)
90) Join the Mile High club
91) Pilot a plane
92) Read every single classic (100 in the NY Times Classic List and The Modern Library’s English Literature list)
93) Go white water rafting
94) See Ayer’s Rock
95) Hang glide off a mountain/valley
96) See mountain gorillas in the wild
97) Visit Nepal
98) See Lake Louise in Spring and Fall
99) Fly over the grand canyon
100) Ask a stranger on the street out on a date
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