Bucket Listing the Summer

My own bucket list is pretty extensive and most of the items on it aren’t things I’ll be able to do this summer, but I still want to try lots of new things. I’ve begun to come up with a mini-bucket list full of skills I can learn in my free time- things that are fun and silly (and sometimes useful) that take anywhere from an hour to a week to learn. The list is short but growing, and its full of ideas that I’ve had over the past few years- things that I’ve scribbled in notebooks or written in my phone or in a word document lost in my computer somewhere, but now I want to get all of these things together and start knocking them off one by one.

So far this summer some of my mini-challenges have been:

• Learning to skateboard. This has been a great one because I can pick up the board and head outside at any time. The board is more portable than a bike and riding is fairly simple to learn- it took me only a few hours to get to a decent level to be able to cruise the streets on a cruiser board.
• Learning to make an origami crane. Another simple one that takes under half an hour and just a square piece of paper. I always thought this would be a neat trick to learn, and now its in my random skills arsenal.
• Dying my hair green. Yeah, I did it. Just the ends though, because I’ve been wanting to for years, so why not? Luckily I have long hair so if I change my mind I can just chop it off.
• Starting a vegetable garden. This takes a bit more effort because it needs to be maintained, but since I one day want to grow my own food, I figured I needed some practice. Currently growing are a few types of tomatoes (including yellow cherry tomatoes!), peppers and jalepenos, purple potatoes, and a few herbs. Mmm I cant wait till the veggies are ripe.

Some more mini-things Id like to do are learn how to accurately pronounce French words, how to make some cool shadow puppets, play hacky sack and marbles, make gnocci and energy bars, pick a lock etc, etc.

There are some sites out there that make it fun and easy to keep track of your bucket list (or goal list):

43 Things

This site is one of my favorites and I’ve been using it for years to keep track of goals and adventure wishes. It allows you to track your progress, write about your successes and failures, and share ideas and encouragement with other users who have the same goals.

Pinterest

Pinterest is popular for all sorts of things, and it is an excellent tool for keeping bucket lists. The idea is to create pin boards full of images you come across on the internet- so any time you come across something you’d like to try, you can pin it to your own personal Bucket List board. Its something that many users do, and a simple search for bucket list on Pinterest will give you hundreds of ideas to get you started. This is an excellent tool for visually driven people. You can comment on your pins and the pins of others, but Pinterest is first and foremost a site for images.

Bucket List

Bucketlist.org and other bucket-list-specific sites like bucketlist.net and summerbucketlist.org (shown in the image) provide fun, colorful, supportive environments for people looking to create and share bucket list ideas.

So start your own list and make sure you have some fun new experiences this summer! What are some odd and interesting things you want to try?