I'll be honest. Life has seemed pretty aimless for the past few weeks. It's been kind of hard. I never really expected post-graduation to be this difficult, but it is.
In Sunday School this week, we talked about goal-setting and direction, and it really gave me pause. What am I doing with my life? I wondered. What do I want to do with my life? What do I want to experience?
The teacher had us start writing up a list of 100 things we want to accomplish in this lifetime. It's an exercise that, when you do it, shows you what kind of a person you want to become and what your purpose in life is. It was kind of hard for me to stay at 100, because I have a lot.
Since I feel like writing it down more than once will reiterate it even more (and since it's on my blog, it might give me more ownership and accountability), here are 100 things I want to do in my life (in order of how they came to my mind):
*Side note: maybe you could help me discover that purpose. :)
1. Have a book published
2. Go on an African safari
3. Run a marathon
4. Bike the Logan to Jackson (Lotoja) Ride
5. Visit New York City at Christmastime
6. Start up a website
7. Learn how to swim
8. Learn a new language
9. Exercise six days a week
10. Read every book on a 1000 Books to Read Before You Die list
11. See a play on Broadway
12. Give a family Christmas every other year
13. Adopt a dog from the Humane Society
14. Make my own wedding cake
15. Become good at snowboarding
16. Climb a 5.12 route
17. Visit Yosemite
18. See Scotland/Ireland/Wales in real life
19. Attend the temple every week
20. Instinctively know what foods need what spices (like the rat on Ratatouille)
21. Study the scriptures for an hour every day (if possible)
22. Run for office
23. Go to Washington DC on the 4th of July
24. Learn how to play the piano
25. Cage dive with sharks
26. Visit Monument Valley
27. Grow and make my own salsa
28. Learn how to surf
29. Learn how to scuba dive
30. Camp in Zion for a whole week under the stars (or just see the stars someplace where there's nothing to block them out)
31. Climb the Matterhorn
32. Traverse the Grand Canyon on horseback
33. Go on a date every single week with my husband
34. Ride a ferris wheel on a pier
35. Drive through every state on a road trip
36. Visit Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello
37. Visit every National Park in the United States
38. Go to Rome and Venice
39. Maintain my own garden
40. Raise kids in a television-free home
41. Help my parents pay off their mortgage
42. Serve someone every single day
43. Visit another country and write down/tell the story of at least one person who lives there
44. Fill my house with DIY furniture and art
45. Buy a painting
46. See the ocean
47. Read the biographies of all of the prophets
48. Eliminate a bad habit every two months
49. Landscape my own yard
50. Learn basic car maintenance
51. Save $100 every month
52. See van Gogh's painting "Starry Night Over the Rhone" at Musee d'Orsay in Paris
53. Own my own business
54. Visit water parks in Wisconsin
55. Grow a flower garden
56. Give my kids a book for Christmas every year
57. Purchase a Cannon Rebel T5I (or whatever the newest Cannon Rebel camera is)
58. Go on a family vacation every other year
59. Learn yoga
60. Have a house by a lake
61. Teach kids how to read at a very young age
62. Bike whenever I can to places I need to be at
63. Climb Mount Everest
64. Go on a cruise
65. Own an adventuring vehicle
66. Protest something at the Capitol Building
67. See the Supreme Court in session
68. Visit a real life lighthouse
69. Go whale watching (preferably Orca whale watching)
70. Take a trip by myself to the desert/wilderness and do nothing besides write
71. Go sailing
72. Master styling long hair
73. Visit the Louvre
74. Eat at a corner cafe in France
75. Visit the biggest zoo in the world
76. See a live volcano
77. Ride a cruiser bike down a beach
78. Have an article published on the Huffington Post
79. Stay up all night watching a meteorite shower
80. Dance in the rain every time it rains
81. See every Audrey Hepburn film ever made
82. Master Bollywood dancing
83. Walk in the places Christ would have walked in Jerusalem
84. Ride a camel through a desert
85. Cliff jump at Bloomington Lake
86. Own a real life Christmas tree
87. Master recycling foods as well as paper goods
88. Visit Boston
89. Go on monthly sibling dates with my brothers and sister
90. Zipline through a jungle
91. Visit the Amazon
92. Refurbish an old house
93. Go parasailing
94. Visit Nauvoo
95. See the Hill Cumorah Pageant as an audience member
96. Go to Roswell New Mexico
97. Be there when the ball drops on New Year's Eve
98. Eliminate processed and artificial foods from my diet
99. Build/create my own artist/writer studio
100. Take names to the temple every time I go