Remaining Life Goals

As if I’ve ever made a list before. The list is kind of restricted to stuff I feel like I control well enough to make happen also. Just FWIW.

• The three-month, 15,000-mile road trip.
• Become functionally fluent in at least one more language.
• Spend at least a(nother) year living in a foreign country.
• Get five novels published. Not sure it’d be at all beneficial to get more than five published — maybe it would be, maybe not. Just seems like most authors only ever wrote/have written one “necessary” novel and all the others are just derivatives of that one. Of course, The One Novel isn’t usually their first, so… Wallace Stegner, for instance, only ever needed to publish Angle of Repose. If Vonnegut had only ever written Slaughterhouse Five, the world would be not much poorer for it — the others feel the same, but less well-considered. I think if I get five published, one will be my necessary one and the other four might have elements of necessity. So there you go. (Bonus points if I get critically compared to Stegner, George Orwell, and Cormac McCarthy.)
• Visit the remaining two parts of the world I’ve not yet visited (= Asia Minor/North Africa South Asia/Middle East/North Africa, Africa).
• Own and live in a house situated on five scenic acres with an outbuilding workshop on-premise.
• At least a three-day rafting trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.
• At least two days kayaking along the Na Pali coast, probably.
• Teach a course at the college level (doesn’t have to be a permanent gig).
• Get into good shape. I should make this one quantifiable, but I’m not sure what it means yet, ergo: not currently quantified.

I’ll add more as situations warrant.

bkd