The New Year is a time for resolutions and depression. Resolutions because hope springs eternal. Depression because resolutions never pan out. Hand in hand with resolutions are life lists. Although they are trendy now (see The Bucket List), I was introduced to the concept seven years ago by a Life List from Men’s Journal (they come out with new ones almost every year). It was inspiring and depressing at the same time. Inspiring for obvious reasons. Depressing because I realized I’d never accomplish even 10 percent of that list and because I realized my own life list would be so massive, I had even less of a chance of reaching those goals. I am counting the months down to 40 (I have 15 to go) and I have yet to go on a safari or see the Great Wall or get close to an active volcano. I haven’t written a novel or kayaked the Sea of Cortez. I have a long way to go before I see all 59 National Parks (the photo above is from La Push, Wash., near Olympic National Park where I went in 2006) or all 32 baseball cities, and I seriously doubt I will ever hike the Appalacian Trail. So instead, I created a life list that included a bunch of stuff I had already done — from hiking to the top of Pikes Peak to entering a chile cookoff to cutting the umbilical cord of my first child — that I thought might look cool to someone else, and were certainly much more attainable goals to a normal person than climbing Everest or rafting the entire Colorado River in a wooden boat, or whatever. Anyway, now I can look at that list whenever I get depressed. Sadly, I haven’t been able to add much to it recently, but hey, that’s what those New Year’s resolutions are for! Hope springs eternal.
Tags: life lists
