Year-end musings: The Bucket List

[textualdeviance]

This is a bit more complicated than just a to-do list. It's partly a way of boiling down what's really important to me, so I can focus on doing what will really make me happiest in the time I have left.

What I always wanted:

-Education:
Learning that gives me not just career skills, but a broad understanding of the world and the people in it

-Career:
Something that's both emotionally and intellectually satisfying, and that has positive effects beyond just myself. Or in short: Getting paid for doing something I love, and at which I am considered very good.

-Partner:
Some who accepts, loves and honors me just as I am, with whom I never feel self-conscious or taken for granted. Someone with whom I can share all the experiences of my life, and who will be a good co-parent

-Friends:
A big chosen family of loving, loyal people I can always be myself around, and on whom I can rely in a crisis

-Kids:
Not to pass on my genes or become a mini-me or relive my own life through. Just someone I can share the joys of the world with, and someone I can watch grow and learn and become her own person. In a way, the practicum/application of my accrued life knowledge.

-Money:
Enough to be able to not worry about basic expenses and to save for a comfortable retirement

-Home:
A comfortable, beautiful house that's big enough to have lots of friends in and has space for dinking around with cooking and poking in the dirt.

-Travel:
I want to see the world! As much of it as possible.

-Creative outlets:
If my career doesn't give me these, then I want at least a good side hobby or two where I can do the art/music/writing thing


What I have/in progress:

-Education:
Mostly. Still haven't completely ruled out grad school or finding a way to finish my music degree (rather than settling for the minor I got), but these things aren't crucial for me.

-Career:
Kind of hard to say I love what I'm doing right now, and I definitely don't love being on contract, but I'm grateful to have any media job at all in this environment, and I do think my skillset and resume are shaping up to be exactly what will keep me employed once the future technical specifics of news generation/delivery finally settle out. I only hope I'm able to find a way to get involved in real journalism, and not just paste links into prefab content. I have so much more talent in this field than that, and I feel like I'm being wasted.

-Partner:
I think I have that, for the most part. We're very comfortable with each other, and that's something I didn't think I'd want as much as I do. I admit that sometimes I wish we were a little more intellectually compatible--I am arts/humanities, he is science, and it's hard for us to mesh on that. I also sometimes feel a little neglected just because of his quasi-Aspie stuff. On occasion, I do feel a bit like just the wife unit algorithm in his life program, rather than someone he acknowledges as a human being. But really, he does that with everyone, so it's not me. As it is, we're both very intense people, so if we focused more closely on each other we'd burn out. It's probably for the best that we just move through life as a team in close parallel--each mostly doing our own thing, but working together as needed.

-Friends:
Still kicking myself for falling out of touch with some folks, but I think I'm worming my way back into the circles I feel happiest in. ;)

-Kids:
Surprisingly, this has become the biggest sticking point in my life so far. I wasted a lot of years thinking that I would just magically get pregnant someday, and being in denial about my infertility. Had I started treatment five years before I did, we might have made it work, but it just didn't. I'm still struggling with coming to terms with that. I'm also dreading the upcoming gauntlet of adoption, which may not be as physically demanding as trying to get pregnant, but every bit as emotionally so--and with some potential minefields of its own.

-Money:
Got it, mostly. We're currently in quite a bit of debt because of the big move, but (assuming I keep working at least here and there) we should be caught up and back to building our savings and doing some of the other big financial things we want to do in the next year or two. Part of me still wants to be A Zillionaire, but really, I think I'd just end up giving most of it away if I were. I think we're probably only one step--economic class? tax bracket?--away from where I want to end up long-term, and that's well within reach in the next 5-10 years.

-Home:
Very close to this! Unless it turns out that we inadvertently moved next door to a crack dealer, I think we'll be happy here for several years, until we're ready to finally build our dream house. It says something that I haven't indulged in my habit for building Sims houses in a very long time.

-Travel:
This is the first year since... Honestly, I don't remember... That I haven't been on an airplane at least once. I miss it, desperately. The combination of money stuff and adoption/kid stuff may make it impossible for me to do much of this in the short term, which will suck. I've done a lot so far, but I've really only barely scratched the surface of what I really want to see.

-Creative outlets:
I really, REALLY miss singing. I also need the time, patience and mental bandwidth to finish the half-dozen books I've started.


So, on that framework:

The List (so far):

-Obtain small human(s). Love, care for, educate and generally help said small human(s) become happy, self-sufficient big human(s).

-Keep looking for that soul-satisfying journalism job

-Get the unnecessary debts paid off and get the savings plans properly going again.

-Do the remaining necessary things for getting Charenton exactly as needed; Build dream house in 10 years or so.

-Own some sort of vacation home somewhere. Hawaii, maybe?

-Become fluent in at least one other language, and learn enough to get by in more: French, Spanish, Italian, German, and at least one each of an Asian, Scandinavian and Eastern European language.

-Visit the following locales (via cruise, if necessary):
Australia
New Zealand
Puerto Rico
New England
Quebec
Chicago
New Mexico
Costa Rica
UK
France
Spain
Germany
Italy
Greece
Norway
Mexican riviera
Japan
Panama canal
Drive I-90 and the 101 from end to end

-Get healthy enough to (at least a little):
Kayak
Ice skate
Scuba dive
Parasail
Snow ski
Ride rollercoasters again
Go camping again

-Find a way to regularly sing/perform again. Preferably in staged productions.

-Finish at least one novel, preferably more.

-Random stuff:
Get another dog and maybe a bird
Grow a food garden from seed to harvest
Find an instrument I can play
Compose a song cycle
Throw a perfect dinner party with an elaborate 12-course meal
Finish building my family tree as far back as I can find records for

Comments

[sweet-hedonia.livejournal.com]

I have been lurking for a couple of weeks, but this has drawn me out. You sing! You plan to write a novel! How much fun are you? I think you have an admirable list going, and much of it sounds well under way. That is more than I can say. More important, you are very frank, and that is a most wonderful, courageous (and thus sadly rare) quality. Bless you for having the guts to adopt, rather than insisting on having one of your own no matter what. There are so many kids in the world who need a decent upbringing, it seems a shame that so many people can only abide raising their own genes. And learn Norwegian, it is an awesome language, very pretty. I might be biased, because my grandparents spoke it, but it is lovely.

I hope you get to finish your list, if not all of it in the next year or so, then certainly in the next few. Happy 2010!