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. Go to Timbuktu
  12. See a tiger in the wild
  13. See a komodo dragon on Komodo Island
  14. See every species of penguin in the wild
  15. See a narwhal in the wild
  16. See the ruins of Carthage (in Tunisia)
  17. Search for the Loch Ness monster
  18. Go to Samarkand and Bukhara
  19. See Iguacu Falls from all three countries it touches
  20. Go to Babeldaop (main island of Palau)
  21. Go to the Faroe Islands
  22. Go to the geographic and magnetic North Poles
  23. See Cappadocia in Turkey
  24. Cruise the length of the Northwest Passage
  25. Go to Suriname
  26. Go to every Canadian province
  27. See Shackleton's grave on South Georgia Island
  28. Go to a game at every major league baseball stadium
  29. See Niagara Falls
  30. Take tango lessons in Argentina
  31. Kiss the Blarney Stone
  32. Visit the cities my ancestors lived in in Lithuania and Poland
  33. See the bat flight at Carlsbad Caverns
  34. Take a cruise on a tall ship
  35. Walk the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral
  36. a. Go to Ethiopia
  37. a. Go snorkeling in the Maldives
  38. a. Take an Amazon cruise
  39. a. Go to the spa in Hershey, Pennsylvania and have some sort of chocolate spa treatment
  40. a. Go to every country in the former Soviet Union
  41. a. Have a beer at the South Pole Inn in Anascaul, Ireland
  42. a. Go to the desert music festival in Mali
  43. a. Go to the World Sacred Music festival in Morocco
  44. a. Go to a baseball game in the Dominican Republic
  45. a. Go to Yemen

Creating

  1. Perform at the National Storytelling Festival
  2. Make a storytelling tape
  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

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. See every Gilbert and Sullivan operetta
  21. Work on a political campaign
  22. Be a museum docent
  23. Take a martial arts class
  24. Volunteer at Travelers' Aid
  25. Learn to identify all of the major constellations
  26. 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 2000-2011 Miriam H. Nadel
Send comments to: mhnadel@alum.mit.edu