(Last updated 15th January, 2005)
When I was 18 - around 1993 - my mother cut an article out of a local newspaper and gave it to me. The article was about a young boy who had sat down and made a list of all the things he wanted to do in his lifetime. That little boy was now a man, and the news story documented that he'd just accomplished something amazing from his goal list - I think it might have been climbing the ten highest mountains in America. This man had accomplished a lot of the things on his list, and attributed many of his accomplishments to having made the list in the first place. I don't remember exactly what was in the newspaper article - it was a long time ago - and I wish I could find it again.
Anyway, regardless of the exact content of the article, the idea of constructing a list of things I wanted to accomplish in my life struck me as a fun, interesting and possibly enlightening thing to do, so I did it!
Thanks to Falling who remembered the name of the man (John Goddard) and the name of the list ("My Life List") and I plugged them into a search engine and came out with something very close to what I'd read back in 1993 but as a bonus, even more recent and comprehensive!
My own goal list, suggested by the idea in the article, began to be constructed in late 1994. Every few months I go through it and update it and add new goals and make notes about the things I've accomplished or about why goals have been superseded. Not many goals get superseded, which surprised me at first. If somebody had asked I would have said my goals changed a lot - now I think it's more true to say I have an awful lot of goals and that their relative priority changes fairly often. They're all still goals, some are just more immediate than others.
Unfortunately for history's sake, when I started the list it didn't occur to me to add dates to my updates of the list. I have been adding dates to additions and ammendments since some time in 2002. Anything undated is earlier than mid-2002.
Contents
- A Note Regarding Current Circumstances
- Jobs
- Academic Achievements
- Things to study
- Self-education
- Travelling
- Physical Achievements
- Adventures To Have
- Musical Achievements
- Writing Achievements
- Creative/Artistic Achievements
- Miscellaneous
And Finally ...
- I dream of leading a long, exciting, full, happy life, and then quietly depart, slipping off to the Summerlands where I can be with all those people I have loved and who aren't in this world anymore, and watch over those still incarnated on earth until they decide to come and join us all up in the Summerlands. Feel free to drop in and visit me there when its your time!
