Bucket List 2013

Every time the year rolls around, my thoughts always drift to the direction of things I would like to accomplish some day. I never really think "new year's resolutions" because to me, they are too short term and everything that I would like to accomplish in a given year are either out of my control or I'm already doing. Or they are things that I ought to do, but don't want to do badly enough. I would like to get pregnant this year, but I can't control that. I ought to quit smoking, but I don't want to at all. I'm already in shape and I'm not going to get more in shape just because I've put it on a to-do list.

So I think about things I aspire to someday. Maybe they'll happen. Maybe they won't. But one can dream, right?

Here's my most recent "bucket list":

• Have 5 children before I'm 40 years old. More is fine. Less is ok, I guess. 5 seems a reasonable number for a person of my health, personality, and vanity.
• Become a fitness model and a personal trainer. I would dearly love some pay off for how much time I spend working out and for the shape I've gotten myself in. 
• Be a lead singer and guitar player in a bluegrass/country band. As a subheading, it would be lovely to have an awesome voice some day. I mean, a really good voice!
• Travel and backpack in Europe for an extensive period of time. You know, stay in hostels, camp outside, stay in one place for awhile if I want, pass through if I don't. 
• Live on one of those calender-picture ranches in Wyoming or Montana for a long time, own horses, be alone, be quiet, be far away from everything.
• Live in a quaint New England town on a hobby farm near the ocean. 
• Write amusingly and thought-provokingly, a la Simcha Fischer. 
• Paint again... something evocative worth seeing. 
• Have a friend I could tell anything to, and be such a friend to someone. 
• Be loved by and be friends with all my children when they are grown up and I am old.
• Read the Bible front to back.
• Read enough philosophy, political writings, and literature to be able to discuss them and bring them up pertinently in random conversations. 
• Sleep out in the desert, see all the stars, wake up and hear the birds (are there birds in the desert?).

 As I reread this, it seems a rather self-centered list of heart's-desires. Well, so be it. I've already crossed off "wife," "mother,"which are two pretty people-serving goals. So I think I'm justified in dreaming dreams.

How about you? What's on your bucket list?