Life List

I wish I kept in touch with this person more. I did an okay job of it the first two years out of high school, but I kept finding excuses that made me believe I was busier than I was to make the effort. I'd like to hope that everyone has had one teacher that has had an impact or changed their life. Maybe in the slightest way of teaching them to like or bear with a subject, like Algebra 2, that they originally loathed. Or a teacher that has forever changed their moral outlook on the rest of the world. Whatever the case, my experience was during senior year high school. He was my Psychology teacher, Mr. Richards. I'd heard a lot of good things about him from people that took him the year before. Stef knows him, she thinks he's awesome too.

Mr. Richards didn't teach Psychology. Not the text book kind at least. The class subject was Pyschology, but he believed in teaching about how to make your life worth living. He taught literal life lessons. At the end of every semester our grade depended on a scrap book of those lessons. I don't want to bore you all with the details of his class and how life changing it was for me. I do want to share one thing he taught us that I think whoever is involved in this blog should do before they right anything substantial (sorry Justin your entry was dull... HAHA JUST PLAYING).

The lesson was called the "Life List." It's known by various other names like the foot list or the bucket list, but it all means the same. It's a list of things you want to accomplish by the time you die. He had us at a minimum of 25, but you coud always add on to it. Everyday should be an opporutinity to strive toward those goals.

Certain things in life that you wish to accomplish may only seem like pipe dreams. You may think you're past the point in your life to dream big. All the innocent goals you thought of for yourself when you were younger seem to be out of reach and now you have to think realisitcally of your limitations. If you continue to live your life like that you may end up in a mundane routine that you never thought you'd be stuck in. I'm not saying we're all destined to sit at a 9 to 5 job, but it may end up that our lives take a path away from what we really want and we unexpectedly end up somewhere we hate.

So dream big. So what if other people tell you it won't happen or it's not practical or that it will get in the way of making money. You can't take money with you when you die. You can't take anything with you when you die. You only leave things for the rest of the world to see. I want to leave a legacy or at least a story of someone who lived their life without knowing how the future was to unfold, but decided to have experiences opposing conventional wisdom in order to live.

When you die, people don't celebrate your death or the fact that you died, we all die one day. They celebrate how you lived. How is your life unique with respect to the rest of the world?

Here is my life list. The one I made senior year was immature. Dumb things like meeting Jessica Alba and being her friend haha. I'm not saying I'm mature now, but I have better goals at least lol.

A few rules
-Start with at least 15.
-Dream big, but within your grasp (e.g. I want to perfect cold fusion. Unless your a physicist that's not going to work... lol).
-Make them mean something to you.
-Be specific, don't be vague or broad. Helps you focus so you can actually accomplish them.
-Look to add on to the list and update it when you think of new things
-The order doesn't mean anything, accomplish them in whatever order you please
-It's okay to fail, just do something twice as inspiring
-And lastly DO THEM

1. Live in Italy for 2 years by the time I'm 35
2. Eat a philly cheese steak at Geno's and Pat's King of Steaks in Philadelphia
3. Learn to scubba dive
4. Live in Chicago for 3 years by the time I'm 30
5. Bungee jump off a bridge
6. Work for the Chicago Bulls
7. Get tickets and go to an NBA finals game 7
8. Jump off a waterfall
9. Work for the Golden State Warriors
10. Learn to ride a motorcycle within the next year
11. Open a fully functional community center with a basketball court in the Philippines
12. When I graduate in December have a plan to work in sports media no later than February 2010
13. Live in San Francisco by the time I'm 25
14. Own a house in Hawaii
15. Swim with dolphins
16. Learn to play drums