The Retiree, Episode 11: Bucket List

The Retiree, Episode 10: Dream

One Month Left: A fictional short-short story

Time Bomb: A fictional short-short story

I Tried to Get INTO Jail

Ideas for a Better Bucket List

Many people's bucket lists are conventional: perhaps going on safari and eating at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Especially if you're psychologically attuned, you might prefer one or more of those I offer in my Psychology Today article today.

A Thinking Person's Bucket List

A typical bucket list might consist of going on safari, eating at a Michelin-star restaurant, and going skydiving. Indeed, when I did a Google search on “bucket list,” all the lists of suggestions focused on travel, adventure, luxury, and unusual ways to have fun, for example, take a belly dancing class, eat fire, or drive a race car.

But many people might want to include some items with a little more intellectual or emotional heft. Perhaps you'll find one or more of those I offer on PsychologyToday.com worthy of your list or, better, will trigger your own ideas.

My Bucket List: Does it make you want to create yours?

Here's my bucket list, from most to least likely to occur.

I present it here to increase my likelihood of making these things happen, and to encourage you to create your own list.

• Dinner at Fleur de Lys restaurant in San Francisco. (when I've lost the 20 pounds I want to lose.)
• A world-class, nurturing (but not sexual) massage
• Attend a concert by Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band.
• Get my book manuscript, How to Do Life: What they didn't teach you in college, published by a respected publisher.
• Extend my forthcoming five-part Washington Post series, "What's the Big Idea?" into a continuing column.
• Teach courses for The Great Courses. They've asked me to do a demo class. Hold a good thought for me.
• Present my blueprint for reinventing education to Tom Torlakson, the California State Superintendent of Schools and his cabinet (which includes my wife, Barbara Nemko.)
  
• Fund an annual prize for the most promising research toward ethically enhancing human intelligence.
• Write a column in the New York Times
• Host a show called Honest Conversations about Race.
• Write a screenplay that gets made into a movie about a wise person whose views and way of being are out-of-step with the times.