Summer bucket list
Whales, strangers, local feuds, and more.
[Jump to this week’s song on repeat.]
First things first, I have a hard time believing the term “bucket list” didn’t exist before the movie — The Bucket List (2007) — spoke it into existence. Seems like a bit of fake news you’d read on Twitter, but a cursory Google search confirms it. I don’t know why I dislike this fact so much or why I felt compelled to share it. (This other fact I just learned, however, absolutely delights me.) Anyway, on to business.
I am a lazy creature of habit and a homebody, as previously noted on this blog, but I’m also very list-motivated, also previously noted. So in the spirit of not spending the entire summer indoors, I made a little bucket list for the next few months. I probably won’t cross off every item on it, but even half would feel like a win.
Guiding ideas
Get back to being in the world.
Be flexible in my routine.
Take off the wfh blinders.
Get involved. Be a local.
Meet people
Make a few friends (or at least prospects).
Find a writing group.
Take an art class.
Talk to a stranger every time I leave the house.
Start a club.
Explore our new backyard
Find somewhere to volunteer.
Find my hikes.
Learn some local history. Go to the history museums, the galleries, the gardens, the parks, the arboretum.
Start to learn local politics, the local figures, the local feuds.
Get over to the nearby islands.
If there’s a local event, go to it.
If someone invites us somewhere, go.
Literally explore our backyard. Figure out what we have going on back there — the names of the trees, plants, birds, etc.
Find the deep cut, locals-only restaurants.
Experience at least 1 new thing in Bellingham for each of the 14 weeks of summer.
Travel
Turns out buying a house is expensive! So this category might get put on hold until the dust settles and we rebound a bit, but it’s good to dream. There’s plenty to do around Bellingham to keep us busy in the meantime.
Get down to Seattle.
Explore the parks. Olympic / Hoh / Rainier / Cascades / Glacier.
Take the ferry to Alaska.
Go to Canada. Vancouver / Squamish / the Sunshine Coast / Vancouver Island.
Misc
Make art and / or write every day.
Meditate every day.
Jump in big body of water.
Try a new sport. A friend got into tennis (not Challengers inspired, she’s just ahead of the trends) and keeps talking it up so I might have to try. But we’ll see where the wind blows.
Get in a kayak and / or SUP.
Have an exciting beast sighting. (Mostly this means a whale, but we are in Big Foot territory now…)
…Geocaching?? I never got into geocaching before, it never felt like my particular brand of nerdom, but since reading
’s newsletter about it, I keep mulling it over. What’s it all about? Have you done it? lmk.
Done
These were already on my to-do list so maybe this is cheating but it helps to start things like this with a bit of momentum, you know?
See the northern lights.
Find my yoga home base.
Your turn
I want to know what you’re getting up to this summer. (Maybe a trip to Bellingham to come visit?) Any must-dos I should add to mine? Are you a summer planner or a summer free styler?
This week’s song on repeat
(Find the whole playlist here)
That's how it's done
That's how it's done
And how it's undone