The other day, I realized that most of my goals are quite generic. I want a house, a good spouse, and 2.5 kids. And a career that doesn't make me inexorably depressed, that would be nice. I do want to give a lot of money to the Against Malaria Foundation, but this is a reflection of my effective altruist brainworms, not my desires for my own life.
So, having had this awful realization, I have written a list of things I want to do before I die, in no particular order.
Marry someone who is right for me.
Purchase a house.
Have 2.5 kids.
Have a career which will not make me inexorably depressed.
Give a bunch of money to the Against Malaria Foundation.
Visit the grand canyon. Every geologist should visit the grand canyon.
Pull a trilobite out of the ground. I have two trilobites, but other people pulled them out of the ground.
Purchase some land.
Travel to Iceland.
Observe an erupting volcano in the flesh.
Visit Mammoth Cave again.
Own a fruit tree, preferably a few.
- If it's a pear or apple tree, make cider out of the fruit. I dunno if I'd want to make wine out of peaches or persimmons.
Make a wine or melomel out of wild blackberries.
Visit the White Cliffs of Dover.
Visit all fifty American states. And D.C. and Puerto Rico.
Go to some kind of loud sporting event with my headphones and earplugs on. I haven't done this before due to my noise sensitivity, but I think it's improved enough that I could.
Camp in a cave.
Go on a road trip across the United States.
Drive down Route 66.
Visit all ten Canadian provinces. I don't know about the territories, I have little desire to visit Yukon.
Own some pretty garnets. Big garnets too.
Make a Chicago - style deep dish pizza with venison saussage.
Visit Australia.
Eat an emu burger.
Consume some part of a kangaroo.
Attend several nerd conferences.
Avoid setting foot on the Bolivar Peninsula ever again.
Maintain a dumb bit for upwards of ten years.
Collect some pretty agates.
Attempt to explain the basics of calculus to a child. I doubt they'd do particularly well in a calculus course, but I feel like you could explain derivatives and integrals to a bright fifth grader.
Ferment Welch's grape juice and call it "Methodist Wine." I assume this will not be good, but it will be funny. "Methodist Pyment" is also an option. We could go all sorts of directions with this, actually: Methodist Vinegar, a nice bowl of Smoking Methodist, Red Methodist Supernova...
Build an apiary.
Make candles out of their wax.
Make mead out of their honey.
Play with explosives on private property.
A number of horny things the internet needn't know about.
Travel to a few Interesting Historic Churches—probably Canterbury Cathedral and St. Peter's Basilica. Maybe St. John Lateran. Probably a few of the nice ones in America.
Drunk watch a number of Silly Movies with friends (some of these are intentionally silly, some of them are by mistake).
*Assassin 33AD**
Borat
Discovering Bigfoot
God's not Dead, and perhaps some of its progeny
Napoleon Dynamite
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (I've already done this with The Life of Brian)
The 90s Super Mario movie.
The Room
Troll 2
Trollhunter
Willie's Wonderland
Probably many others I didn't just think of.
Watch Star Wars with That One Friend who's never seen Star Wars.
Ride a rollercoaster. No, a veritable multitude of rollercoasters.