100 Things To Do Before I Die

A while back, I read this article about Ted Leonsis, owner of, among other things, the Washington Capitals. He’s some type-A personality who’d achieved a lot of success in business and apparently has an incredible drive to succeed. The article wasn’t very interesting, but in it he talked about this list that he’d written. After surviving a plane crash in 1983, he composed a list of 101 things to do before he died.

I thought this was a great idea, so I started writing my own. My goals may not be as lofty, but they’re more diverse (and not organized into categories).  Plus, 101 was too many, so I’m going with 100.

So, here are the first twenty things I want to do before I die. Stay tuned for the rest in the next few days:

1. Live in a house built to my specifications
2. Play ice hockey (beer league will do)
3. Live in a third-world country
4. Completely research my family history
5. Be interviewed on the CBC
6. Own a dog
7. Own another cat
8. Own a hybrid or electric car
9. Live by the ocean
10. Drive across Canada
11. Visit Patagonia
12. Visit Vietnam
13. See a play of mine produced
14. Read 100 more of the books on Harold Bloom’s Western Canon.
15. Work as a film critic
16. Read Ulysses by James Joyce
17. Build or skate in an ice rink in the Republic of Ireland
18. Change careers
19. Hike the Cabot trail
20. Become passably fluent in French

While Googling for ‘biography “mario lemieux” italian’ to determine if Msr. Lemiuex is of dual French-Canadian/Italian descent, I happened upon this guy’s list of 101 things to do before he dies (including meeting Mario Lemieux and becoming fluent in Italian).