Miriam's Life List - Goals and Accomplishments

If you want to know what this is all about, see my journal entry from 31 December 2000, "On Goals". I've done related entries (updates on progress) on 1 July 2001, 28 July 2002, 5 September 2004, and 31 December 2005. Items marked with an "a" after the number are ones I added after making the original list. I also marked an item with an "n" that should have been on the list had I thought of it, but I didn't think of it until I'd already signed up to do it.

I had been adding to the list each time I finished something, but I turned 50 in 2008 and that seems like a good time to stop adding unless I hear about something so amazing I have to do it.

Travel

  1. Do a Volksmarch in every state capital and in Washington, D.C.
  2. Go to every National Park in the U.S.
  3. Hike the length of the Appalachian Trail
  4. See the headquarters of the French Foreign Legion (on Mayotte)
  5. Go to every U.S. territorial possession
  6. Go to every remaining country in the British Empire
  7. See Angel Falls in Venezuela
  8. Go to the Cape Verde Islands
  9. Walk the length of an historic pilgrimage route in Europe
  10. Ride a bike across the U.S.
  11. See a tiger in the wild
  12. See a komodo dragon on Komodo Island
  13. See every species of penguin in the wild
  14. See a narwhal in the wild
  15. See the ruins of Carthage (in Tunisia)
  16. Search for the Loch Ness monster
  17. Go to Samarkand and Bukhara
  18. See Iguacu Falls from all three countries it touches
  19. Go to Babeldaop (main island of Palau)
  20. Go to the geographic and magnetic North Poles
  21. See Cappadocia in Turkey
  22. Cruise the length of the Northwest Passage
  23. Go to Suriname
  24. Go to every Canadian province
  25. See Shackleton's grave on South Georgia Island
  26. Take tango lessons in Argentina
  27. Kiss the Blarney Stone
  28. Visit the cities my ancestors lived in in Lithuania and Poland
  29. See the bat flight at Carlsbad Caverns
  30. Take a cruise on a tall ship
  31. Walk the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral
  32. a. Go to Ethiopia
  33. a. Go snorkeling in the Maldives
  34. a. Take an Amazon cruise
  35. a. Go to the spa in Hershey, Pennsylvania and have some sort of chocolate spa treatment
  36. a. Go to every country in the former Soviet Union
  37. a. Have a beer at the South Pole Inn in Anascaul, Ireland
  38. a. Go to the World Sacred Music festival in Morocco
  39. a. Go to Yemen
  40. a. Go to Burning Man
  41. a. Drink a Singapore Sling at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore

Creating

  1. Perform at the National Storytelling Festival
  2. Make a storytelling recording
  3. Perform in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
  4. Write a one-woman show and perform it at least 12 times
  5. Finish my essay collection on "How to Add More Stress to Your Life"
  6. Write an entire story (at least 5 pages) in verse
  7. Have an essay published on the op-ed page of the New York Times
  8. Have an essay published on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal
  9. Have a travel book published
  10. Write a novel
  11. Write a cookbook
  12. Make a drum
  13. Learn to play the didgeridoo
  14. Learn to play Uillean pipes (Irish bellows-blown bagpipes)
  15. Play all of Mussourgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" on the piano
  16. Conduct an orchestra
  17. Knit a sweater without using a pattern
  18. Make an afghan for every year of my life and donate them to a homeless shelter
  19. Go to a crafts retreat/workshop program (at least one week)
  20. Make a gingerbread house
  21. Make a pousse-cafe with at least six layers
  22. Enter the Pillsbury bake-off
  23. a. Build a dollhouse using the blueprints for the house I grew up in
  24. a. Take a ceramics class
  25. a. Make an entire afghan in afghan stitch
  26. a. Get ink in the Washington Post Style Invitational

Other

  1. Teach somebody to read
  2. Go sailing
  3. Become fluent in Spanish
  4. Learn to speak an Asian language reasonably well
  5. Learn to read the Arabic alphabet
  6. Learn to read heiroglyphics
  7. Fly in a glider
  8. Build my own house
  9. Teach three people how to bake bread
  10. Ride a unicycle
  11. Read Dante's Inferno in the original Italian
  12. Read all of the books on Howard Haycraft's list of significant mysteries
  13. Read everything on the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society's list of classic science fiction novels
  14. Read everything in Clifton Fadiman's Lifetime Reading Plan
  15. Read everything in the New York Public Library's Books of the Century
  16. See every movie that's won a best picture Oscar
  17. Eat fruit from a tree I planted myself
  18. Go fly fishing
  19. Read all of the Bible (in translation)
  20. Work on a political campaign
  21. Be a museum docent
  22. Take a martial arts class
  23. Volunteer at Travelers' Aid
  24. Learn to identify all of the major constellations
  25. Trace my family tree back to at least the 18th century

Done

These are in reverse chronological order. Note that some of the dates before 1996 are approximate, but will be within a year or two.

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Copyright 2000-2012 Miriam H. Nadel
Send comments to: mhnadel@alum.mit.edu