A Bucket List

I’ve only written one bucket list previous to this one, but it was a simple thing written when I was 14 or 15, full of items like “kiss a boy” and “try alcohol for the first time”. There were a few serious wants listed as well, but I’ve long since lost the list. The following is a list of dreams, desires..things I truly hope to accomplish before my life ends.

1. Visit at least one new country a year for the rest of my life. Visit it to experience the culture, the life of the people, and how different everything is from my own worldview. I want to be completely immersed in the way other people live.
2. Get tattoos. Have at least the three that I want right now within the next ten years: the star to match the necklace my grandmother gave me when I turned twelve, “abenteuer” for my time in Germany, and a watercolor feather I’ve painted with the Hebrew word for freedom incorporated within.
3. Meet my biological family, most specifically my mother, half-brother, and father. I know it won’t make me feel totally complete, but I know it’ll at least answer life-long questions and fill up a partial part of the hole left from all of the “who am I without that knowledge of my past” thoughts.
4. Finish my book on adoption. I want to have my story out there. Writing is my best form of communication, so I find it extremely important to share this in hopes of reopening some sort of interaction with my biological mom. I also want to help people avoid some of the speed bumps I encountered with my own parents.
5. Be officially published. It doesn’t have to be a massive project, but something with my name on it. Perhaps it’ll be an article in a newspaper or a magazine, or maybe it’ll be a novel. I just have this idea that one can’t really call themselves an author or writer until there is something published officially in their name. I know that’s a silly way to think, but it’s this thought that’s always been there.
6. Have the full experience of being in a recording studio and have some sort of professional recording of my singing. The song doesn’t have to be shared with a single soul, but I want to have it for my own.
7. Take a professional level cooking class involving making something completely from scratch, particularly pasta.
8. Learn how to throw pottery on a wheel. I want to be able to have a set of dishes that I use regularly that I can look at and be proud of because I’ve made it with my own hands.
9. Experience truly passionate love. Maybe not love in the proper sense, but have one of those relationships that is all-consuming passion. One of those passions that inspires through wonder and pain. A passion that the truly great poems and songs are all about.
10. Find that one great love. Probably not the same as the passionate love, but a great love that withstands time, hardships, and all the emotional wreckage I tend to throw in the way.
11. Learn to develop my own film. Similarly, learn to shoot photos on a classic old film camera. There’s just something captured in the film that never quite translates to digital.
12. Get henna in India, drink vodka in Russia, make pasta in Italy, wander the moors in Scotland, research my biological last name in Ireland, go through the streets in Morocco, and drink tea in Turkey. Travel, travel, travel
13. Set foot on every continent – even Antarctica
14. Become fluent in German. I didn’t fully realize how much Germany would actually effect me until it was time to leave. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t wish I could be back there right now.
15. Write a novel. Write a fictional love story based on 2012-2014. There were so many life changes that need to be turned into a story.
16. Own my own house. Something small and simple, but a place that is solely mine.
17. Live nomadically for at least three years. Live without “stuff” and with every freedom possible. Live without certainty of what the next day will bring.
18. Learn to fly planes. One of my favorite things about my dad is that he used to fly, and I’d love to follow in his footsteps on that account
19. Learn to truly appreciate myself and accept all of my flaws. All of these self-conscious thoughts and actions need to stop or at least take a very extended vacation. I can’t really handle being with anyone else or part of any relationship until I get a grip on myself.
20. Apply for the Jack Kerouac writer’s fellowship. I know that there are far more deserving and talented writers out there, but even applying would be a massive step in the right direction for me.
21. Have a moment of clarity- a moment when I’m completely aware that something I’ve accomplished has actually been able to make a difference to someone else’s life. That’s the goal behind much of what I do, especially my writing, but I want to experience the realization I’ve done it.