I’ve spent hours trying to find anything that would fit on my bucket list until I realized I have nothing. I’ve never particularly wanted to go anywhere or do anything special.

So I fear this is one exercise I will have to skip entirely.

One of the biggest problems my wife and I have is aligning each other’s dreams.

I think my bucket list would have things that are MY dreams but also incorporate things I’d like to do with my wife.

1) Adventure: Something I have always wanted to do is throw everything to the wind and go somewhere. No preparation, no planning; I don’t even care where I go. Just pack a bag, choose a direction, and go until I want to come back.

2) Learn to repair automobiles: My dad was a good mechanic but, like most parents of my generation, my parents were exceedingly over protective. Rather than teaching me how to fix my car, he would insist on fixing it himself and not let me near it. This was a terrible blow to my self confidence. To this day, I don’t even know how to change my oil.

3) Achieve financial independence: I came from a dirt poor family. I have been working since the age of 12, first helping my family make ends meet, then trying to keep myself from going under. I put myself through college on loans and working 36 hours a week, and now the loans have come back to bite me in the ass. Though, unlike my parents, I can afford to, eventually, pay off my debt with only a little hardship on my part.

4) Sail to the Bahamas: My grandfather taught me to sail and, ever since I first stepped on a sailboat, I have wanted to sail for a distance. The Bahamas have many beautiful islands that still only have the islanders living on them. No restaurants, no casinos, nothing. Just relaxation and simplicity.

5) Earn the respect of my future in-laws: My fiancé’s parents are multi-millionaires. Her dad is the CFO and senior vice president of an insurance company, her mom only works part time and, yet, still makes far more than I do working full time. Ever since they first met me they have thought little of me, because of my family. Since then I have put myself through college and found a fine job, and yet I still sense that they have no respect for me. Perhaps they just see me as less than them and always will. I’d still like to rub my success in their faces.

6) Lose weight: When I was 16 I weighed 220 pounds. I decided to lose weight and gain muscle because I was planning to join the Marine Corps. I did just this, dropping down to 180 pounds of solid muscle, but I never joined the Corps because everyone I knew and cared about was so against it. Instead I went to college. I was 20 when I started and had kept the weight off until then. I spent three years there and gained all of that and more back. I now weigh 270 pounds. I live in shame and that shame keeps me from losing the weight. I need to suck it up and get rid of it.

7) Learn to fly: I have a driver’s license, a captain’s license, a hunting license, and a fishing license. All that’s left now is to achieve another dream of mine: To get my pilot’s license.

Reconcile with my brother: My brother and I never got along as children. We’re just too different. He was outgoing and handsome and I was a fat introvert who could barely keep up with the other children. As we aged, we grew further and further apart. Now we barely speak unless we are forced together by circumstance and even then it’s something of a “Hi”, “Bye” while we pointedly avoid looking at each other. He treated me terribly when we were children and, while it bothered me for a while, I am over it. I’d like to reconcile with him and let him know that I forgive him, so that we can be as brothers should be.

9) Ask my grandfather and my father about their lives: My family is not the most open family. I don’t even know my dad’s dad’s name. (He died before I was born) I know little to nothing of my father’s childhood or his hopes and dreams for himself. We have never been close and have never spoken much because he was always drunk when I was a kid and I resented him greatly until recently. My grandfather was always so caught up in work and personal projects that I never really got to know him either. I’d like to. I missed my chance with my great-grandfather, who was a WWII veteran. I always wanted to talk to him about it, as I am something of a WWII buff, but I never did. It was always, “I’ll ask him next time I see him” or “He probably doesn’t want to talk about it.” Then, one day, it was too late. I lost my chance and I don’t want that to happen with those who I still have a chance with.

10) Give my children an easier life than I had, while still not spoiling them: By now, if you have been reading everything I wrote, you will see that I didn’t have an easy childhood, and what is written here is only a miniscule portion of it. I think that the difficulty I had in growing up is what gave me the strength to succeed. However, I wouldn’t want to put my worst enemy through all the pain and suffering that was required in my childhood and adolescence, least of all my own children. I want to give them self confidence and keep them happy, but not give them everything they could ever want. I don’t want to them to have to work to support the family when they are 12, but I want to teach them the value of work and, yes, even hard physical labor. I have no intentions of paying their way through college. I will help, but they will hold down jobs and they won’t leave without some debt. Paying for it yourself really makes it worth something, rather than being an extended childhood with no supervision.

Of all of the goals I have listed here, I think this last one may be the hardest. I don’t even have children yet and I already want to protect them from life. But I need to force myself not to, or they may never grow up.

I think writing down goals, even when you know you don’t currently have the resources to attain them, can bum you out a little, but it can also give you extra motivation and desire to acquire the necessary resources.

The ABA Journal (it might have been the Solo and Small Firm one) had a similar article.

It was titled something like “100 things.” The rationale is that your need to write down at least 100 things instead of just the typical dozen or so that everyone wants to do. The bigger list looked like a good idea because it forces you to think of a lot of small things too.