I’ve always wanted to put a bucket list together, but I’ve always found an excuse to avoid starting.There will always be plenty of time to do it later, I’d assure myself. But time is a funny thing. It stretches out before it and it makes you feel like it’s infinite. We wish it away at school, waste it on people who don’t deserve it, and we stare blankly at the Facebook feeds we aren’t really interested in. And then we get a wake-up call and the time that seemed so limitless suddenly feels so much shorter.

Truth is, I’m dying. 

We all are.

Some of us may have more time than others, but none of us are immortal. One day, all of us will die. And when that last breath is drawn and your eyes blink close one final time, do you think you’ll look back fondly upon the countless hours spent in offices and classrooms? Will you hold warm memories of long days or weeks spent glued in front of your computer’s monitor? We get just this one chance to live our lives, and so many of us are just wasting it away. And in reality, nothing scares me more than poking back at fifty or sixty or even seventy and wishing I’d done more with the time I had. 

And so that was the motivation behind this bucket list. These are the things I’d like to do before it’s time to call it a day. But all of them, I hope, are within my reach. Maybe not right away and maybe not cheaply, but they’re all things I can someday hope to check off the list. And even if I don’t get through them all, I can imagine it will have been one hell of a ride trying.

∞ Receive an actual letter 

∞ See a drive-in movie

∞ Eat a Doritos taco

∞ Attend a midnight screening

∞ Spend New Year’s Eve downtown

∞ Spend New Year’s Eve in New York

∞ Have a reunion with my best friends from elementary school

∞ Fly a kite

∞ Get a fake ID

∞ Visit my mom with him 

∞ Find out what my blood type is

∞ Be in a parade

∞ Eat a double down

∞ Get into the university I want to go to (02.22.13)

∞ Go to church

∞ Meet the Cash Man 

∞ Take the Trans-Canada train across the country

∞ Hang from the CN Tower Edgewalk

∞ Go to Snakes and Lattes

∞ Beat up a piano with a baseball bat

∞ Dye my hair the colour of a red velvet cupcake

∞ Watch all the Nicholas Sparks movies (09.23.12)

∞ Learn to skip rocks (08.06.12)

∞ Set foot on all seven continents

∞ Smash a pie in someone’s face (08.05.12)

∞ Donate blood

∞ Learn to play guitar

∞ Have my fortune told

∞ Sponsor a child in Africa

∞ Have a penpal 

∞ Solve a Rubik’s Cube

∞ Go horseback riding

∞ Watch the sunrise (08.03.12)

∞ Watch the sunset at Habourfront

∞ Volunteer abroad

∞ Ride all the roller coasters at Canada’s Wonderland

∞ Kiss someone in the rain (09.18.12)

∞ Write my own will (07.17.12)

∞ Ride a giraffe

∞ Get a tattoo

∞ Grow a plant

∞ Watch all the Harry Potter movies in one day

∞ See Cirque du Soleil live

∞ Run / Bike a marathon

∞ Volunteer at a retirement home

∞ Volunteer at a kids camp (08.13.12)

∞ Volunteer at a hospital

∞ Help break a world record (09.30.12)

∞ Float on the Dead Sea 

∞ Climb the Great Wall of China

∞ Visit Tahiti

∞ Get 100 in one of my courses

∞ Ride in a hot air balloon

∞ Go to the zoo (07.08.12)

∞ Kiss a dolphin

∞ Learn to love

∞ Watch the Titanic (09.07.12)

∞ Climb a mountain

∞ Go to the airport and take the next random flight

∞ Have a reunion with all of my high school friends

∞ Adopt a dog / cat

∞ Fall asleep in a hammock

∞ Take a cooking class

∞ Write myself a letter and read it ten years later

∞ Dress up as a naked sim and run around downtown

∞ Ride the whole TTC subway map

∞ Walk down Yonge Street

∞ Get married

∞ Make a difference

∞ Create a bucket list (05.16.12)