30 things by 30

My friend Ashley told me a few years ago that she had a list of random things she wanted to do before she turned 30. She was in her early 20's at the time and had made her list some time before that. I thought it was brilliant. I decided, at 28, that I would make the same sort of list.

Two years doesn't really give one ample time to accomplish 30 random things, things that may otherwise never be done, like swimming with sharks, but I have been fortunate enough to have experienced a few random things on my own that I gathered activities from the past to help pad my list.

To be clear, this isn't a bucket list. I hoped that I would live well beyond my thirtieth birthday. It is more of a list of goals to meet before my next milestone birthday, not before I kick the bucket. Granted, some things on the list could cause me to kick the bucket (swimming with sharks).

Surprisingly, I was able to complete 30 things. Some of them (swimming with sharks) were not accomplished and moved to the list of 10 more things to accomplish before I turn 40. Some of them sounded easy enough, like making the perfect buttermilk biscuit, but in actuality were harder than they seemed.

My list, in no particular order:


1. Go to a NASCAR race
2. Zip line
3. Learn how to knit
4. Visit a foreign country by myself
5. Visit the Statue of Liberty
6. Visit Ellis Island
7. Visit the Empire State Building
8. Go to a Major League Baseball game
9. Play Black Jack in Vegas
10. Attempt to Snow Ski
11. Work at a summer camp
12. Carve a pumpkin
13. Go to a rodeo
14. Go to a county fair
15. Make the perfect buttermilk biscuit
16. Read Gone With the Wind
17. Learn to Water Ski
18. Spend the night in a zoo
19. Learn to play golf
20. Paint a picture
21. Eat a cookie from Neiman Marcus
22. Graduate from college
23. Buy a car
24. Live on my own
25. Eat dinner out by myself
26. Visit Graceland
27. Eat some type of wild game (antelope in this case)
28. Attend the Cornbread Festival
29. Go to a mountain top spa overlooking the sea
30. Become lifeguard certified

The hardest thing on this list was eating dinner out by myself. The easiest was eating a Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookie. Some of these deserve their own blog posts, so I will be posting them randomly. Make a list! It's fun and trying to accomplish everything before a big birthday is so much less depressing than trying to do them before you die.