Bucket lists are one of those things that are easy to give up on as you realise that life isn’t going to be quite what you expected.
So is it good to have a bucket list or some big hairy audacious life goals? Or should you be realistic to avoid disappointment?
Here’s my experience.
When I was young I really wanted to sail across the Atlantic in a tall ship. It was all to do with some pretty outlandish ideas I had worked on in my dissertation. Non the less it became my v focus after leaving Uni.
After a crew position with Square Sail fell through my sister to got me a job in the outdoor industry.
The jobs was purely a means to an ends so I could get free sail training, get qualified to get a paid postiton on another boat.
Serendipitously by pursuing this vision I met Keri. I managed to convince her that getting a £15k loan together so we could do a 3-month Yachtmaster qualification would be a great step 4 months into a relationship. We would see the world and earn enough money to start our own outdoor centre, a shared vision.
What we hadn’t considered was no one wanted newly qualified Yachtmaster especially since our course competition ended with the end of the sailing season.
We actually cut out the saving and achieved our dream of running our own outdoor centre by getting some hefty investment from a Welsh training provider.
Then life happened and all the smaller things we said we would do while we travelled the world had to go on the back burner.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is, that what you aim for isn’t necessarily what you’ll achieve. What I’ve experienced is by having clear goals and being serious about achieving them you begin to think laterally about how you can achieve them even when obstacles get thrown in your way. Often you may end up somewhere else entirely.
I didn’t make it across the Atlantic on a tall ship but by pursuing it I met the love of my life and ended up achieving a life long ambition of running an outdoor centre. By doing that I’ve reevaluated what I really want and found another way to achieve it.
One of our main incentives for starting ALMO was this horrible realisation that we were unlikely to achieve many of the things on our bucket list such as sailing the Atlantic.
I guess we all have a choice of accepting where life led us and adjusting our ambitions or going for something a bit out of the ordinary and accepting it might not happen the way we expect.
With ALMO starting to take off we’ve dared to dream again.
But we are now different people with new views and a family.
Time to do Keri’s favourite activity and make a list.
Here’s what we’ve come up with so far.
- Safari at the Tshukudu game lodge.
- Watch turtles hatch on the beach
- Island hop the Indonesian archipelago navigating our own sailing boat
- Spend at least 3 months living the van life
- Horseback safari
- Climb a peak and wild camp in all of the UK national parks
- Canoe Expedition
- Wild Camp in Scandinavia
- Learn a second language
- Sit together in a natural thermal spa
- Build an incredible den/treehouse
- Live off-grid
- Help 100 people create freedom.
- Sail the Atlantic any way anyhow.
- Live with a native community in the Pacific.
- Live in the wilderness.
- See the northern lights from a dog sledge.
- Get splashed by a whale.
- Surf one wave as a whole family
- Invest and help in a community project.
- Complete the Machu Pichu Inca jungle trek.
- Summit Blencathra (our first Valentine’s Day together)
- Summit mount Kinabalu (Keri and I’s first +4000m mountain)
- Swim in every ocean
- Spend a night in a hammock on a beach
- 10 exceptional random acts of kindness
- Complete a race together
- Complete a national trail
- Stargaze at Aoraki Mackenzie Reserve
- Have an electric car running off electricity we generate ourselves.
- Take Nick’s dad on one of the great train journeys.
- Take Nick’s mum to a nice resort.
- Take Keri’s parents to the Italian lakes.
- Turn up at an airport and catch an unplanned flight.
- Rent a really nice air BnB for our friends.
- Ski mount Ruapehu as a family.
- See penguins in the wild.
There have been suggestions from all family members, specific places are usually somewhere we’ve been individually but want to share as a family. These will all be posts on our blog as we tick them off.