I started this list not long after making my 30 by 30 list as a way to keep track of the things that I wanted to do over the next year. The first list was hard enough to make in one sitting that I knew I wouldn’t be able to come up with a specific number of things easily. I decided to pick a more long-term time frame than a single year. Leaving the list open-ended and with room to expand gives me the opportunity to enjoy new experiences rather than worry about how many items I have left to cross off before my next birthday.

The results of my musings are below. Enjoy!

Relationships

  1. Build our own house
  2. Complete our family
  3. Go an entire weekend without using a computer
  4. Go on a cruise for my 5 year anniversary and every 5th anniversary after
  5. Go on a weekend trip with friends
  6. Host a murder mystery dinner
  7. Meet someone famous
  8. Meet a sitting head of state

Cuisine

  1. Eat at a Michelin 3-star restaurant
  2. Find a dish that I like that contains a vegetable I don’t like (e.g. broccoli)
  3. Make mozzarella cheese from scratch
  4. Eat a meal cooked by a celebrity chef
  5. Eat in a pitch black restaurant

Creating & Entertainment

  1. Be a playtester for a game
  2. Be an extra in a movie
  3. Blog regularly enough to realistically call myself a “blogger”
  4. Build a book scanner
  5. Build a fire pit
  6. Build a home forge
  7. Build a pottery wheel
  8. Build a swing set for the kids
  9. Create a piece of art and sell it
  10. Create a video game
  11. Get a 3D printer and make something with it
  12. Learn to draw
  13. Publish World of Pannotia as an RPG campaign setting
  14. Start an a cappella group
  15. Write a book
  16. Write a symphony
  17. Write or arrange enough songs for a solo EP (a cappella or otherwise)
  18. Participate in (and finish) a NaNoWriMo
  19. Try out to be on a reality/talent show (e.g. The Voice, America’s Got Talent, etc)
  20. Invent something and patent it

Health & Sports

  1. Hit my target weight and/or waist size (somewhere around 160-175 lbs. and 32”-34”, respectively)
  2. Learn to play golf well enough to not look silly
  3. Participate in a half-ironman
  4. Participate in an Ironman
  5. Run 5 miles without stopping
  6. Run 30 miles
  7. Run a marathon
  8. Run a sub-8-minute mile
  9. Sky dive
  10. Study a martial art
  11. Win my age division in a race

Learning & Professional Development

  1. Earn a certification in something totally unrelated to my profession
  2. Get a Master’s Degree
  3. Learn a new language
  4. No less than every other year, learn a new programming language well enough to add it to my resume
  5. Make a non-trivial contribution to an open source project
  6. Submit a proposal to speak at a tech conference
  7. Build and sell a successful business
  8. Work for Mozilla

Travel & Adventure

  1. Attend the Olympics
  2. Be a part of a flash mob
  3. Become certified for scuba diving
  4. Drive a race car over 150mph
  5. Fire an automatic weapon
  6. Fly a plane
  7. Fly first class somewhere
  8. Fly in a private jet
  9. Get a tattoo
  10. Go on a trans-oceanic cruise
  11. Go on an Alaskan cruise
  12. Go parasailing
  13. Go skiing on real mountains
  14. Go skinny dipping
  15. Go to a Comicon in full costume
  16. Go to an ice bar
  17. Go white water rafting
  18. Hike up an active volcano and look in
  19. Ride a bullet/hypersonic train
  20. Ride an elephant
  21. Ride in a helicopter
  22. Ride in a hot air balloon
  23. See a performance at the Sydney Opera House
  24. See the aurora borealis or aurora australis
  25. Spend the night in an igloo
  26. Stay in an ice hotel
  27. Stay in an underwater hotel
  28. Swim with dolphins
  29. Swim with sharks
  30. Take a zip line tour
  31. Visit all 7 continents
  32. Visit Dubai
  33. Visit Europe
  34. Visit the “Four Corners”
  35. Visit the Colosseum in Rome
  36. Visit the Eiffel Tower
  37. Visit the Great Wall of China
  38. Visit the Louvre
  39. Visit the pyramids at Giza
  40. Visit the Statue of Liberty
  41. Visit the world’s largest swimming pool in Chile
  42. Go cliff diving
  43. Learn to eat/breathe fire
  44. Walk on hot coals
  45. Go snowboarding
  46. Swim with dolphins
  47. Swim with sharks
  48. Swim with stingrays
  49. Explore a cave
  50. Visit space
  51. Dine with the captain on a cruise
  52. Set a Guinness world record
  53. Watch every “Best Picture” Oscar Winning movie
  54. Watch the IMDb Top 250 movies
  55. Attend the Oscars
  56. Attend a movie premier
  57. Go on an unplanned RV trip across the country

Finance & Luxury

  1. Earn a salary of $150,000 or more in a year
  2. Become a millionaire
  3. Eliminate all my debt
  4. Own a boat

Environment & Conservation

  1. Go a full year without buying gasoline
  2. Reduce my electric bill to $0 for a month
  3. Buy a “zero-emission” car