h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've already past 30, but here's my list, just as a starter...

1. Leave home! I did this at 25. No regrets.

2. Live in a place other than the one you grew up in. Obviously related to #1. But by all means stay in touch with your home too. And return if you want to.

3. Do some travelling!

4. Own a camper! A Car? Nope, got to be a camper of some kind. Sort of like a mobile-bedsit/party-on-wheels/spare-bed/truly-practical-way-of getting-around... I bought one after I was 30, and I just wish I'd done it sooner.

5. Get to know your parents while you've still got them. And learn whatever it is they have to teach you. My mum died when I was 30 and I had learnt a lot from her. My dad's still around, but I've still got to learn a few things from him...

A strange list perhaps?
So what's yours?

UG

I totally agree. Three New Year's ago, way past 30, my husband and I started a tradition of making our Fantasy List. Here's the report I gave this year on my weekly blog:

On New Year’s Day 2002, when Tony and I knew that my teaching contract would not be renewed at the end of that year, we took ourselves to lunch at one of our favorite Irish pubs, The Field in Dania Beach, Florida. We drew up a list of our wildest fantasies; not resolutions, not goals for the year, but “someday I really want to…”
As I wrote the next year in my first entry in my first blog, Every Wednesday: The Journal of a Teacher in Search of a Classroom: “As we got up to leave, I said, ‘We will come back here one year from today and we will be amazed—not only at how many of these we did accomplish, but that we accomplished the ones we thought were wild and crazy fantasies.’”
Within six weeks we were planning our wedding and our voyage on Semester at Sea. Two down.
Each New Year’s Day since then we went back to the Field and came up with another list, which we then stored on the computer so we wouldn’t lose them like we did the first one. When making our plans to move here to Birmingham, I predicted we would find another Irish pub named The Field where we could continue our tradition. I’ve searched, but there isn’t one.
This year Tony was scheduled to work at the Ramada on New Year’s Eve and then for New Year’s Day breakfast, so we just got a room there, brought our own champagne and celebrated in style. When he got off work at about 2 pm on January 1st, we decided to go home first, chill out, and then head up to our local—not Irish, but comfy—and make our list.
The moment we stepped off the bus at the stop near our house it started pissing rain. Big fat drops that hit so hard they felt like hail. We came home, had brandy in our tea, and kept looking hopefully out the window. Yucch. It sure ain’t Dania Beach, Florida.
So this year our tradition shifted to January 2nd and an English pub, but the idea is the same. We had printed out the last two years’ lists and checked off what we have done and what we haven’t—yet. It’s always an interesting exercise. One of our wildest dreams was “three months in Europe”; now we live here! I still haven’t done stand up comedy, and we didn’t take a barge through the French wine country, but I do have something in a savings account, I did win an award (First Place in the Florida chapter of the American Association of University Women’s Creative Writing competition, for Non-fiction Writing) and I did get a piece published nationally (“D H Lawrence’s ‘Sons and Lovers’” in the November issue of Mental Floss). We did take a picture of Tony’s kids all in one place and he is working in a new job. “More organized” and “less clutter” showed up for the past two years; we partially solved that by moving to a smaller apartment. Oh—and we didn’t stop George Bush. But neither did anyone else.
I strongly recommend you try a similar exercise. It’s good for your creativity. Just putting down in writing what you would really like to do in your life can be the first step that propels you in that direction. We never look at the lists until the next year, and we are always amazed. So here are selective items from this year’s lists. They’re only in the order that we think of them—no rankings, no priorities—and we do one for me, one for him, and one for us. By the way: The simplest thing to accomplish from last year’s list? “Clean the rug.” Never did it.
Fantasy List 2005

KD

1. A savings account that always has something in it.
2. See something new every week
3. Regular Girls Night Out
4. Hang out with the Stocks again
5. Own property in Hollywood, Florida
6. Teach on each continent (Asia, Australia, Africa, and South America are left)
7. Cheap weekend getaway to some city in Europe to visit someone we know
8. A book deal
9. Expand my culinary repertoire
10. Be asked to give a speech
11. Get a security deposit back from somewhere we rent (I cheated and added that the next day)

TD

1. Stand on the Great Wall of China on 05/05/05
2. Off the cigarettes
3. Take my granddaughter Erin on a trip with both of us
4. A new or an additional job
5. Join a club
6. Go to Villa Park to see Aston Villa play Manchester United
7. A house big enough for my whole family to stay with us
8. Restore Kathleen’s “doctor’s desk”
9. A day at Cheltenham races with John Maher and no money
10. Fly in the cockpit of a jet
11. Tour the West Country of England

US

1. A barge tour through the French wine country
2. Semester at Sea again
3. Spend a holiday near the Donnellys
4. Go through the Western US by train
5. Drink less wine
6. Give regular dinner parties
7. Re-do our wedding on Hollywood Beach for our 5th anniversary
8. Get a Eurail Pass and just go
9. Volunteer in a disaster area
10. Spend our 20th anniversary together in 2022, with our friends, healthy

What’s on your list this year?

1. get a life
2. get a girlfriend
3. start a business
4. buy a car

by the way i am only in the 27th year of a non so interesting life

My list of things to do by the time you're 30:

1. Figure out who you are and what you're about. (This is easier said than done, and is subject to periodic revision.)
2. Find your passion(s) in life and go after them.
3. Find a cause or issue that isn't all about you, and commit yourself to it.
4. Find some sort of physical activity that you enjoy, then do it regularly.
5. Learn to handle money wisely.
6. Learn basic first aid, how to cook a meal from scratch, how to change a tire.
7. Learn to separate the wheat from the chaff. The world is full of misinformation, outright lies, and useless garbage; you'll be much happier if you can weed out all of the cr*p.
8. Develop some sort of spiritual life. It doesn't have to religion per se; just realise that the universe is a much bigger place than any of us can know. Learn to embrace the mysteries.
8. Remember: you're never too old to have a happy childhood. Vow to keep a place in your life for laughter and play.

Ahem: goal #8.5: learn to post without any mis-spellings, missed words, or other nincompooperies.

At the rate I'm going, I'd better make that a goal for age 40...

quizzical: Yes.

Just Yes.

Nicely put.