Life List Update

Now that summer classes are officially over, I have a glorious amount of time on my hands. As in, I read 4 books in the last 8 days. On weeks where I don't have any assigned reading I'm like a racehorse bursting out of a starting gate. That is, if the starting gate were a book. And the race was a relaxing evening with a blanket and tea. Then it's a perfect simile. With all this time, I will be writing a bunch more blogs, which is something that I look forward to. The best advice I keep reminding myself is that "A good writer writes. A good writer writes." Simple as that. As I write more for this blog, I also organize it more. I've collected a whole handful more of experiences for my life list--my ever-growing, sentient list. Here they are: (the bolded ones are ones that I've already done--my list serves as a challenge and as a reminder.)

Work on a house with Habitat for Humanity
Learn and perform the Thriller dance
Read everything by Ralph Waldo Emerson (How am I a fourth year university student and never read anything by him before?!?)
Attend a large music festival such as Lollapalooza/Coachella/Sasquatch
Memorize USA state geography
Watch the Cirque de Soliel perform
Go around the world and find my own personal 7 wonders
Meet Sol
Memorize the flag for every country
Start a compost
Go white water rafting
Get a Eurorail pass
Ride in a hot air balloon
Get in a fight (I just finished Fight Club. Sue me.) (Do people still use the term "sue me?" Is that still a thing?)
Catch someone reading a book I wrote
Climb the Grand Canyon
Throw a surprise party for someone
Graffiti something
Start a dance in a public place
Be in a parade
Take in and appreciate a busker
Be a completely different person in a different city
Help someone cross something off their own life list
Be on tv, a magazine, the front page of a newspaper
Kill something and eat it
Make a list of everything I own
Have something/someone named after me
Pay for someone's groceries
Actually make a tangible New Year's resolution and keep it

And two more that are a little more dear to my heart:
1. Give a TED talk. The second this came into my mind my heart started racing. I have spent countless hours being inspired by different TED talks, and it would be a serious achievement if I could every cross this off. Some of the things on my list I take more seriously than others (as in, if I died before memorizing the US state geography I wouldn't need to come back as a ghost to avenge myself). Not to say that if I die before doing a TED talk I would be disappointed, it would just be really really cool, that's all.

2. Perform a spoken word poem in front of a large audience. The reason why this is dear to my heart is because a) it achieves my childhood dream of making poetry cool again and b) I'm crossing it off today! Well sort of. I showed my pastor my video from the last post and he said that he wanted to include it in a Sunday service. A part of me really wanted to do it live, but I'm still really jazzed about getting the to opportunity to show it for all 3 services this Sunday. While I'm not sure whether I can technically cross this one off as I'm not performing it live, it's still right up there. I hope that this is a day that I can look back on as the first of many opportunities like this.

(Fun fact: I didn't realize it at the time, but my last blog post was my 150th post, as well as my 10,000th view. Considering how long I waited to post it, it's cool that it just worked out like that. Coincidences are fun! Also side note, if you have a blog/tumblr/whatever they've come out with now, could you link to my video? I'm still working on getting it out there and the more links there are to it, the higher up it goes on Google search-- this is the one thing that I learnt in Computer Science 1000.)