[All completed items have been moved to the top. This list is up-to-date as of 10/23/2021]
- ✓ Go skydiving (3/10/2014)
- ✓ Plant a tree
- ✓ Go para-sailing
- ✓ Join a riot
- ✓ Hitchhike (2008)
- ✓ Learn how to play pool
- ✓ Learn how to play poker
- ✓ Pick my poison (gin)
- ✓ Go commando
- ✓ Get on a plane without knowing where it is going
- ✓ See the Grand Canyon
- ✓ Acquire an international pen pal
- ✓ Dance on a stage in front of a large group of people
- ✓ Run through a field of flowers in a dress
- ✓ Go skinny dipping (7/2008)
- ✓ Participate in a bar fight
- ✓ Get a professional massage
- ✓ Throw (clean) panties at a live band
- ✓ Jump in a pool/fountain/lake with clothes on
- ✓ Dance on a rooftop
- ✓ Write inspirational messages in public bathrooms
- ✓ Write threatening messages in public bathrooms
- ✓ Go to New York
- ✓ Go to Los Angeles
- ✓ Join a parade
- ✓ Create a personal travel map
- ✓ Get trashed while wine tasting
- ✓ Donate blood
- ✓ Donate plasma
- ✓ Donate hair
- ✓ Have my portrait painted
- ✓ Give myself a haircut
- ✓ Read Moby Dick
- ✓ Take a philosophy class
- ✓ Write a rejection letter to Harvard
- ✓ Sunbathe topless (Summer 2009)
- ✓ Picket something
- ✓ Fake being drunk at a party
- ✓ Get grandparents to share detailed family tree information
- ✓ Go to a Monster Truck Rally
- ✓ Learn to change a tire
- ✓ Meet and spend the entire night hanging out with complete strangers (many times over:)
- ✓ Paint a house
- ✓ Order pizza and answer the door in lingerie
- ✓ See the circus
- ✓ Invent a drink
- ✓ Have something published
- ✓ Shotgun a beer
- ✓ Go whale watching by the San Juan Islands for Orcas
- ✓ Go whale watching in Mexico for Hump Back Whales
- ✓ Drink Absinthe
- ✓ Visit Mt. St. Helens
- ✓ Visit a gun range
- ✓ Get acupuncture (8/20/2015)
- ✓ Get or watch someone get a tattoo (2010, 2020)
- ✓ Fly in a hot air balloon (3/14/2014)
- ✓ Ask for a raise
- ✓ Ride on a motorcycle (August 2012)
- ✓ Get fired on purpose
- ✓ Stay out dancing all night and go straight to work in the morning
- ✓ Scuba dive in the Great Barrier Reef (3/11/2014)
- ✓ Create a mission statement or manifesto
- ✓ Celebrate at the Kanamara festival (penis festival) in Kawasaki, Japan
- ✓ Ride a bullet train
- ✓ Watch a live birth (11/15/2013)
- ✓ Spend a day visiting expensive car dealerships test-driving cars that I will never be able to afford
- ✓ Moonwalk out of a room
- ✓ Take part in a dance off
- ✓ Eat the Agave worm
- ✓ Fly in a helicopter
- ✓ Visit a huge gospel church
- ✓ Make a quilt
- ✓ See a show on Broadway
- ✓ Scuba dive
- ✓ Attend a Gallery Opening
- ✓ Join a book club
- ✓ Visit an underground cavern
- ✓ Attend a masquerade
- ✓ Go to the tracks (horse or dog)
- ✓ Roll in a huge pile of leaves
- ✓ Go dog sledding in Alaska (6/24/2015)
- ✓ Get a professional makeover
- ✓ Crash a ritzy party
- ✓ Slide down a brass fire pole
- ✓ Smoke a Cuban cigar
- ✓ Get engaged
- ✓ Put flowers on the untended grave of a stranger
- ✓ Cook dinner in a fire
- ✓ Learn the rules of football
- ✓ Solve a mystery train ride
- ✓ See Teatro Zinzanni
- ✓ Hit golf balls into the sea
- ✓ Brood on a motorcycle while listening to “Take My Breath Away” or “Highway to the Danger Zone”
- ✓ Dumpster Dive
- ✓ Correspond with someone in prison
- ✓ Tightrope walk from a great height
- ✓ Smuggle something illegal over the U.S. border
- ✓ Smoke a cigarette out of a 1920s cigarette holder
- ✓ Buy a new car
- ✓ Karaoke in front of an entire bar
- ✓ Watch AFI’s top 1oo films (track my progress here)
- ✓ Create a family tree
- ✓ Go to a Drive-in Movie
- ✓ Take a DNA test
- ✓ Sleep in a tree house
- ✓ Go Blackwater rafting
- ✓ Go spelunking
- ✓ Swim with a shark (3/13/2014)
- ✓ Take a food foraging class
- ✓ Arrive by sea plane (June 2015)
- ✓ Blow a lot of money gambling
- ✓ Put $111 on black on a roulette table in Vegas (11/11/2011 at 11:11 pm– Yes I won!)
- ✓ Zip line (November 2011)
- ✓ Fly first class (7/13/17)
- ✓ See a full eclipse from the center of totality (in Lime, Oregon on 8/21/2017)
- ✓ Get a dog (July 14, 2017)
- ✓ Go to a Cirque du Soleil show (November 2011)
- ✓ Try cupping therapy
- ✓ Play the stock market
- ✓ Eat roe right out of the fish (completed summer 2017)
- ✓ Have a white Christmas
- ✓ Learn to juggle
- ✓ Take guitar lessons
- ✓ Own an original piece of artwork
- ✓ Send a message in a bottle
- ✓ Write 50 journals
- ✓ Complete a ropes course
- ✓ Do a juice fast for a week
- ✓ Fly a kite
- ✓ Go Paintballing with friends
- ✓ Climb a lighthouse
- ✓ Hike on a glacier
- ✓ Graduate from university
- ✓ Drive the Pacific Coast Highway
- ✓ Visit the Redwoods
- ✓ Hike through Glacier National Park
- ✓ Visit the Blue Grotto
- ✓ Throw a coin in the Trevi Fountain
- ✓ Stroll Through Sagano Bamboo Forest
- ✓ See Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia
- ✓ Complete a triathlon
- ✓ Visit a jeweler’s office in the diamond district in Manhattan
- ✓ See Pompeii
- ✓ Go curling
- ✓ Buy a storage unit at auction
- ✓ Rent and use a metal detector
- ✓ Read 500 books
- ✓ Drink at a swim-up bar
- ✓ Ride in an amphibious vehicle
- ✓ Join a cult
- ✓ Watch the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace
- ✓ Have high tea in England
- ✓ Hit a Clay Pigeon While Skeet Shooting
- ✓ Take a natural mud bath
- ✓ Ride in a tuk tuk in Bangkok
- ✓ Visit Wat Rong Khun aka White Temple in Thailand
- ✓ Travel alone
- ✓ Bathe with a baby elephant (4 Jan 2020)
- ✓ Survive a global pandemic
- ✓ Flash a stranger
- ✓ Buy a house
- ✓ Bathe with an elephant in Thailand
- Go snowshoeing
- Go to the SuperBowl
- Relax in a Sensory Deprivation Tank
- Shear a sheep
- Try weird food:
Beef tongue,Horse, Elk,Alligator,Eel,Escargot,Foie Gras,Cactus,Chicken feet,Umeboshi (pickled plums), Agave worm, Bear, Reindeer,chocolate covered ants, Whale, Guinea Pig (“Cuy” in Ecuador or Peru), Durian, Abalone, Prickly Pear, Head cheese, Haggis, Fugu, Stingray - Visit every major religion’s holiest cities (
Rome,Vatican City,Kyoto, Lhasa, Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Varanasi, Pushkar, etc.) - Attend a service for every major religion (
Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hindu, Taoism,Shinto, Buddhism) - Attend all the major lantern festivals
- Spring Lantern Festival in China (Nanjing, Shanghai, and Beijing are where the largest events are held)
- Hoi An Lantern Festival in Vietnam
- Diwali
- *Yi Peng Festival in Chiang Mai, Thailand (usually in November and coincides with Loi Krathong, another lantern festival held in Thailand with large events in Bangkok and Sukhothai)
- Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival in Taiwan (Shifen, Jington, and Pingxi all celebrate–the largest is in Shifen)
- Vesak Day at Borobudur temple in Java, Indonesia (usually in May)
- Toro Nagashi in Japan: paper lanterns are lit and floated on the Asano river in the city of Kanazawa. (Usually first Saturday in June)
- Thadingyut Festival of Lights in Myanmar
- Boun Lai Heua Fai in Laos
- Bon Om Touk or Water Festival in Cambodia (usually in November with large event held in Phnom Penh)
- Memorial Day Lantern Floating in Hawaii (Oahu’s south shore at Ala Moana Beach)
- Send someone anonymous secret admirer flowers
- Use a fake accent for an entire day
- Have tasteful nude portraits taken
- Give $5 to someone for a random act of kindness
- Learn to whistle with two fingers
- Moon someone
- Send an anonymous drink to a lonely guy at a bar
- Make a scene at a restaurant (preferably fling a drink in someone’s face)
- Have a book published
- Brew my own beer
- Give a cop the finger
- Casually fling a lit cigarette at something flammable (preferably something expensive that I’ve just soaked in gasoline)
- Pick up a hitchhiker and make them tell me their life story
- Bungee jump
- Do a keg stand
- Go on a coast-to-coast All-American road trip in a red Ford Mustang convertible
- Attend the summer Olympics
- Go to confession in a Catholic church with a list of a lifetime of sins
- Write a comedy act and perform it at an open mic night
- Start a club
- Be an extra in a movie
- Learn to drive a stick shift
- Visit a psychic, tarot card reader, medium, or fortune teller (preferably all four)
- Read the complete works of Shakespeare
- Crowd surf at a concert
- Write a screenplay
- Walk ten dogs down the street in a big city
- Visit the White cliffs of Dover
- Go to Wimbledon (usually June to July)
- Visit Stonehenge
- Sleep in a haunted castle (perhaps Comlongon castle in Scotland)
- Visit Evil Eye in York: it has 1026 types of gin
- Drink at the Guinness Brewery
- Kiss the Blarney Stone
- Cross Ireland by bicycle
- Down an imperial pint in London’s Samuel Pepys pub on the Thames
- Ride a horse through the British countryside (bonus points if wearing early 19th century garb)
- Take acid while visiting Uluru in Australia
- Invent something useful and patent it
- Go to the top of the Sears Tower and lean against the window
- Read War and Peace
- Learn to tap dance
- Ride in a blimp
- Have my artwork displayed in a gallery
- See an active volcano (preferably on the Big Island of Hawaii)
- Just pack and get on a bus without knowing where it’s going
- Backpack through Europe
- Host a formal cocktail party for 25+ people
- Milk a cow
- Have flattering black and white head shots taken
- Jump off a waterfall
- Create my own holiday
- Send a postcard from every continent
- Throw a dart at a map and go there
- Go to the original Disneyland
- Play strip poker
- Surprise someone wearing nothing but a trench coat and heels
- Visit every country in Europe
- Be in the audience of a TV show
- Ride the Trans-Siberian Express through Asia
- Drink beer at Oktoberfest in Munich
- Visit Neuschwanstein castle
- Shower under a waterfall
- Catch a fly ball in the stand of a Major League Baseball game
- Climb Mt. Fuji
- Eat Fugu
- Watch live Sumo wrestling championships and yell “Hakkeyoi!”
- Drink tea in a traditional Japanese tea garden
- Visit Africa’s Serengeti Plain and watch the wildebeest migration from a hot air balloon
- Learn Italian or French to the point where you can go on a sexy rant
- Run with the bulls in Pamplona (July 6-14)
- Go to a writer’s retreat
- Spend a week at Burning Man (usually Labor day weekend)
- Visit a nudist colony, aka take a “nakation”
- Go shopping in Milan
- Visit Villa del Balbianello on Lake Como in Italy
- Hear Andrea Bocelli sing opera in Milan
- Ride in a Gondola in Venice
- Stomp grapes in Tuscany
- Hike the cities of Cinque Terre (preferably during the off-season)
- Dance a Waltz at the Vienna Opera Ball
- Skate through the streets of Paris
- Ride a bicycle through the Loire Valley in September
- Sunbathe at the nude beaches of the Cote D’Azur
- Attend a couture show in Paris
- Walk/run/motorcycle the Great Wall of China
- Visit the Forbidden City
- Take an ink/calligraphy/painting class with an expert in China
- Visit the Tianjin Binhai Library
- Celebrate Dia de los Muertos in Mexico City
- Soak in the mud and waters of the Dead Sea
- Go to Cairo and Luxor and see the pyramids and float down the Nile
- See the Sri Meenakshi temple in India
- Visit the Taj Mahal
- Shop for gold in India during wedding season (October-December)
- Navigate the backwaters of Kerala, India, on a houseboat
- Learn to play the ukulele
- Learn to play the harp
- Bathe in the Blue Lagoon in Iceland
- Go to Argentina to look for Dinosaur bones
- Join a group of storm-chasers
- Visit the Amazon rainforest
- Drink a mint julep at the Kentucky Derby while wearing an elaborate hat (usually in early May)
- Visit the Indy 500, the Monaco Grand Prix, or 24 Hours of Le Mans
- Climb Mount Olympus
- Ride a Harley on Route 66 (check out the rumble strips that play America The Beautiful)
- Take a train ride on the Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul
- Steamboat cruise down the Mississippi (preferably with a man named Jim)
- Raft down the Nahanni in Canada
- Witness the Thaipusam festival in Singapore (January/February)
- Stay in the Presidential suite of a hotel
- See the sunrise from Maui’s Mt. Haleakala
- Obtain a black belt in a martial art
- Try every alcoholic spirit in the world
- Take piano lessons
- Host a kick-ass family reunion
- Hop the border to and from Mexico
- Attend Comic-Con
- Try archery again
- Live abroad
- Celebrate New Years in Times Square
- Go full throttle on the open road
- Make out at Niagara Falls
- Pee off a really tall building
- Travel the Norwegian Fjords
- Visit Trolltunga in Norway
- Hike to Preikestolen in Norway (also called Pulpit Rock)
- See the hometowns of ancestors
- Go Skijoring with dogs
- Attend the St. Lucia festival in Stockholm, Sweden
- Visit Tjolöholm Castle in Sweden
- Stay at The Ice Hotel in Jukkasjarvi, Norrland, Sweden
- See the Northern Lights/aurora borealis
- Go on safari through the Laplands
- Throw a pie in someone’s face
- Rescue someone from mortal peril
- Witness a Civil War reenactment battle
- Attempt to kiss the Pope
- Start/participate in a major food fight
- Ride a horse bareback, in a red dress, on the beach
- Become an ordained minister
- Learn the metric system by heart
- Mardi Gras in New Orleans (mid-February to early March)
- Second line a jazz funeral in New Orleans
- Eat breakfast at Tiffany’s
- Learn to fly a plane
- Wakeboard
- Ding-dong-ditch someone’s house with a flaming bag of dog poop
- Have a ridiculous temper tantrum and throw destructible objects off a balcony
- Jump out of a cake
- Yell at an authority figure in front of a large group
- Be serenaded on a balcony (preferably in Spanish)
- Attend a film festival (preferably Cannes)
- Go fly fishing
- Have a barbershop quartet sing for me or someone else
- Send a message via airplane
- Tuen Ng (Dragon boat festival in Hong Kong usually in June)
- Attend or host a Ho Down (must have jug player, banjo, washboard, and spoons)
- Get a real estate license
- Get hypnotized by a professional
- Be a truck driver
- Learn to sail and then sail around the world (or at least to the South Pacific)
- Get arrested at age 80 or older
- Fly to the moon
- Go on a pilgrimage to the holy land
- Hang glide in Vermont in autumn when the leaves are vivid
- Learn basic engine checking/fixing
- Read the entire Bible, preferably with historical annotations
- Visit Yunnan with a really good camera
- Build a tree house (preferably with a child)
- Swim in each of the seven seas
- Watch the sunset on Santorini
- Harmonize on a street corner
- Wear a disguise
- Travel Magellan’s exact route
- Go on an African Safari
- Take group therapy and don’t hold back
- Thwart a mugger and/or prevent a crime
- Bowl a perfect 300
- Perform a to-the-books exorcism
- Pan for gold like an old prospector
- Make moonshine in a bathtub
- Learn morse code
- Visit Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood
- Try fencing
- Go down in a submarine
- Learn braille
- Dive for jewelry in a public lake
- Volunteer overseas
- Take dance lessons
- Give birth
- Attend a space shuttle launch
- Spend one Christmas on the beach drinking Piña Coladas
- Visit the Galapagos
- Take the SATs years after college
- Deactivate a live bomb
- Attend a midnight mass
- Learn to read lips
- Hire a private detective
- Experience Brazilian Carnival
- See/compete in the Elephant Polo tournament in Nepal
- Put a scavenger hunt in my will
- Ride a camel through the desert
- Have a star named
- Walk over hot coals
- Win with a royal flush
- Start at Lake Tear of the Clouds and go by canoe down the Hudson to the Statue of Liberty
- Host a Thanksgiving where you serve everyone’s favorite food (pizza, cheesecake, etc.)
- Ballroom dance at the Rainbow Room
- See the terra-cotta soldiers at Xian
- Join a manhunt, search party, or posse
- Ride in a side car
- Give everyone you love a note outlining how they’ve enriched your life
- Tour the Prado (Madrid, Spain), the Louvre (Paris, France), the Hermitage (Saint Petersburg, Russia), The National Gallery (London, England), the
Metropolitan (New York, USA), and the Uffizi (Florence, Italy) - See a live polar bear in its natural environment
- Loot
- Visit Easter Island
- Get married
- Go HALO diving (preferably over the Alps)
- Hunt something with a spear
- Go hunting for big game
- Bicycle across America (or across the state of Washington, or along Highway 101)
- Go to Busch Gardens in Virginia and go on all the roller coasters I was too afraid to as a child
- Take ferries all the way up to Alaska
- Sponsor a girl’s education
- Hunt for pirates
- Have a pet fox
- Get baptized in the Mississippi
- Shoot swamp rats in the Everglades and use the profits to buy beer
- Drive the Overseas Highway, Miami to Key West, Florida
- Ride naked in the Fremont Solstice parade
- Make an entire meal out of foraged food
- Climb Mount Rainier
- Visit Dubai
- See Nasir al Molk Mosque in Shiraz, Iran
- See the Parliament Building in Budapest, Hungary
- See the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, UAE
- Go to a floating lantern festival
- Learn how to blow glass
- Go to an oxygen bar
- Have a fish pedicure
- Go on a river cruise along the Volga river
- Cook live lobster
- Kill, cook, and eat a rattlesnake
- Live in a boat house on Lake Washington
- Visit Mexico when all the monarch butterflies swarm there
- Visit Sveti Stefan in Montenegro (“Lux Apartments” nearby)
- Win the lottery
- Stay in a hut over the waters of the Maldives
- Dive for pearls
- Watch the North American Caribou migration
- Go see a live marching band show at an HBCU (Southern University, NCAT, Brown, etc.)
- Drive an ATV
- Go snorkeling in St. Johns
- Visit Argentina’s Iguazu Falls
- Build an epic gingerbread house from scratch
- Go clamming and immediately make clam chowder afterwards
- Sleep in an igloo
- Be a street performer
- Go to a Renaissance Festival
- Take singing lessons/learn to sing within my octave
- Become a self-made millionaire
- Charter a yacht
- Stay in a 5-star resort
- Attend a pig roast in South Pacific
- Drink at an ice bar
- Eat in a pitch black restaurant
- Enter something in a food competition
- Do a polar bear plunge
- Find treasure with a metal detector
- Meet the Dalai Lama
- Go ice fishing
- Ride in a snowmobile
- Climb the Haʻikū Stairs on O’ahu
- Tour the Biltmore Estates in NC
- Visit the world’s largest salt flat Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia
- Swim in the World’s largest swimming pool: San Alfonso Del Mar in Chile
- Visit Patagonia in Chile/Argentina
- Swim in a Cenote in Mexico
- Hike through the Crooked Forest in Poland
- Make edgy street art in a prominent location under the cover of darkness
- Swim next to a Blue Whale
- Waterfall ice climb at Banff, Canada
- Walk the 1,200 km Shikoku Pilgrimage
- Start in Miami and travel down through the Caribbean islands to Venezuela
- Write 100 journals
Have an idea for this list? Please leave a comment!
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