What's On My 30 Before 30 List: • The Rose-Tinted Globe

You’ve probably heard of a bucket list. Maybe you’ve seen the 2007 movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. The concept is simple: a list of experiences or achievements that you want to accomplish before you “kick the bucket”, also known as dying.

Although I’m as list and goal-oriented as the next girl, I’ve always found a bucket list to be just a bit morbid. Also, I know myself and I know that I need deadlines. Just wanting to do something in my lifetime is not enough; if I’m actually going to make it happen, I’m going to need a specific range of dates to shoot for or it’s going to be just a dream forever.

Enter the 30 before 30 list. 30 things that I’d like to do or learn before I turn the big 3-0, which for me is May 2019. Yep, less than 5 short months until I’m no longer a 20-something. Yikes.

Why I decided to do it:

I like lists and I also like checking things off my “life experiences” list. I even like having goals to work towards 100% of the time, even if they are fun or weird goals. You could say I like doing all the things. Also, I’ve got a whole bunch of things to do in this life, so I might as well start accomplishing things now!

What I hope to accomplish:

Besides accomplishing each of the 30 items on the list obviously, I am also looking forward to what happens when I’m time-bound to complete things. The majority of the items on my list are things that I’ve always wanted to do or have been thinking about for a long time. Why haven’t I done them yet? Because there hasn’t been any reason to do them.

I think this is a trap that a lot of us get stuck in. We think there is always going to be more time so we don’t need to rush. We have our whole lives to travel, have experiences, do the things we want. This is why so many of our dreams go unrealized.

With the pressure of my 30th birthday approaching, I’m forced to revisit some of these dreams and actually make them happen. Sure, you might say that making them an item to check off takes some of the romance and maybe the joy away from these experiences, but I disagree. I can think of nothing more satisfying than actually doing the things I’ve said I want to, no matter the mode of accomplishment.

I first created my 30 before 30 list around October of 2018, but I’ve been fairly lax in actually scheduling or completing items on the list save for 3: running a full marathon, climbing a mountain, and getting another tattoo. Now that time is ticking down, it’s time to kick it into high gear. With the months flying by, I’ve got to commit to between 5-6 items for each of the next months if I’m going to accomplish all I want to.

What’s on the list:

I actually separated my list into three categories when I was first creating it: mind, body, and soul. I wanted a balance of learning skills and setting up systems that would ease my mind, physical goals that would challenge and thrill me, and items that would fulfill me and get to the heart of who I am and who I want to be. So far I’ve completed three body goals: the aforementioned marathon, mountain, and tattoo, and no items from the other two categories.

I’ve got a few items in progress: working on capsule wardrobes for each season, trying to blog more, and working on my 500 miles running tracker, and many more items that I really haven’t thought much about. My goal for the next few weeks is to schedule out or plot each goal so that I have a rough idea of when I might accomplish each one. You can see all 30 items on the graphic below.