The Last Test and Proof

1. Float down the Amazon River in a wooden canoe.
2. Find my uniform (Think Karl Lagerfeld, Steve Jobs)
3. Sam and I build our woodsy dream home.
4. Cook an apple pie with a woven top - from scratch.
5. Have my first french discussion with a shop keeper about what it’s like to run a business and a family in Paris. 
6. Master my own morning green juice
7. Lay in my center splits arms wide
8. Help a company who does amazing things do better
9. Keep seahorses 
10. Dip my toes into the freezing ocean while sitting on the edge of an iceshelf in the Arctic. (And watch a beluga whale swim by!)
11. Have Kate Arands from wit & delight style an urban shoot
12. Go on a trip with Andrew to the Galapagos Islands. Mexico City (UFO Hunting). The Pentagon. The first Grand Lodge in London (birthplace of the freemasons). And CERN. 
13. Gallop bareback on a painted horse that I get to feed every morning.
14. Have tea with an Olympic gold medalist to ask them what they decided to do after their dreams came true. Phelps would do nicely.
15.  Hike to a glacier lake. Alone. August 2011 It was my birthday. My heart was broken. Never seen anything so icy so beautiful.
16. Master the art of Mac’n’cheese. 
17. Cook some palak paneer in Mumbai with one of my new friends I’ve just met.
18. Buy Sam an original Marc Johns for our 10th anniversary.
19. Swim with a wild dolphin in the carribean.
20. Publish a book of poems.
21. Whisk my mama away to Nepal to say an everlasting prayer.
22. Make a homemade pizza in the Italian countryside.
23. Cook a quinoa casserole in my first kitchen with an island.
24. Watch my dad celebrate his 40th anniversary at GM and fulfill his retirement dream. Help him buy his first amphib plane.
25. Take a photograph of my baby(ies) every day for the first year of his/her life. And every birthday thereafter. 
26. Treat a girlfriend to a trip to the Maldives before it goes under. 
27. Vote for the first gay prime minister.
28. Teach my first class.
29. Take a lesson on joinery from my Grandad and design/make my first wooden chair out of Swedish pine.
30. Put an African girl through K-12.
31. Hit 10,000 followers on Pinterest or equivalent platform.
32. Publish a review of one of my favourite restaurants in Vancouver.
33. Go back to Cortes Island on my 50th wedding anniversary.
34. Grow a garden big enough to feed my family for the summer.
35. Have Jody Rogac take my portrait.
36. Name Daisy the cow’s first calf.
37. Take a course at UBC, again, one day.
38. Utter the words, “I’ve been a nonsmoker for 25 years.”
39. Publish a collection of inspired objects and interviews with their makers.
40. Prepare/eat a 10 course gluten-free vegan meal for family and friends.
41. Take my high school girlfriends on a road trip across America.
42. Build an artist community of sharing business strategy and ideas in my hometown.
43. Stand up straight once and for all.
44. Subscribe to the Sunday NY Times.
45. Thank the writer(s) of butdoesitfloat.com by sending them a series of photographs.
46. Eat a raw oyster directly from the ocean. March 2012 Cortes Island, big and slurpy. Mmmm
47. Spend a summer helping my dad decorate his new home after he’s built it.
48. Sob at my baby’s first dance recital, science fare, invention, poem, and victory.
49. Tour the North of England with Gran.
50. Be invited to do a set of film stills for an upcoming independent film.
51. Jump in the water at Iguazu Falls.
52. Play at my first poker table with James in Vegas.
53. Pay back my parents 10x over.
54. Go on a silent retreat.
55. Make a website for my Gran’s artwork, sell her first piece online.
56. See a pod of orcas in the wild. Hopefully kayaking next to them. Be super scared and ridiculously excited and in complete awe all at the same time.
57. Design/make an entire outfit, wear it to Denny’s.
58. Help a friend start their own business. Whether it’s financial, marketing, or design support.
59. See where Marie Antoinette slept. September 2011 Never seen a bed that royal that  small!
60. Poutine. The real thing. In Quebec.
61. Take my kids to see my childhood homes.
62. Do a portrait series of people outside the Pompidou.
63. See a pride of lions in the wild.
64. Start a book club. Actually read all the books. Make it awesome enough that everyone else actually reads all the books. Maybe it’s just ‘readings’ not books. (I’m taking ideas & members)
65. Finish grad school. 
66. Paint the giant papier mache flamingo.
67. Have my brother build and design a green house/solarium next to the kitchen.
68. Spend a month in Brooklyn. Exploring. Eating. Writing. 
69. 69 at 69, ‘nuff said.
70. Write a blog people actually read.
71. Invent a fruit salad awesome enough to eliminate cantaloupe from all fruit salads.
72. Vote for the first atheist prime minister.
73. Have my own sheep. Shave it. Learn to use a loom. Make my own wool. Knit something.
74. Sing a song we wrote, publicly. 
75. Perfect my own dijon vinagarette
76. Shoot and edit a short film. 
77. Run a half marathon for my 40th birthday
78. Hold my brother’s first child. 
82. Make a gigantic dream catcher. 
83. Make my own goat feta from Charlie the goat. 
84. Be Dorothy for Halloween. Find a cairn terrier and everything.
85. Make an origami bouquet. 
86. Portrait series of a flower in different liquids (coconut water, coke, ionized water, milk, etc). Submit to the Center for Art + Environment.
87. Cook a lobster. 
88. Marry Sam, the man of my dreams.
89. Look sexier at 50 than I did on my wedding day.
90. Sleep in the desert. Stare up at the milky way. October 2011 Oh yes, did I ever.
91. Be a mentor for a person in each decade below mine.
92. Knit a scarf for myself and each girlfriend.
93. Visit an organic coffee farm and have an espresso.
94. Lock out in Standing Bow.
95. Take 50 portraits of 50 friends impersonating 50 heroes of mine.
96. Tell Oprah, if not Martha Beck, “Thank You” over tea.
97. Be a frequent contributor to Design*Sponge or equivalent interior style blog.
98. Donate $10,000 to the organization of Katrina’s choice.
99. Publish a photographic memoir of my life.
100. Buy a one way ticket to paradise.

*101. (for good luck) Re-write the remaining things to do at age 50.

Feelings are magnetic. So it goes that if you generate certain feelings — and you have the power to create any feeling you desire — then you increase the power of your emotional magnetism. But we need to limber up, loosen the images and adjectives encrusted on our goals and most-desired states. It helps to get poetic, lyrical, and abstract. Go there with me.

Danielle Laporte

I want mornings to feel like a crisp mimosa.
I want friendship to feel like hot pink.
I want my travels to feel like waves detonating against a rocky shore.
I want my yoga to feel like birdsong.
I want hard work to feel like blink-sleep. Look down, look up, complete.
I want my photos to feel like a dispersion of white light inside a desert breeze.
I want play to feel like lion cubs at sunrise.
I want love to feel like solid, earthy, sun-warmed ground. Everlasting.
I want my coffee to feel like a Dali trip.
I want rest to feel like french lavender candles candle burning at 3am.
I want family life to feel like schoolyard of curiosity & divine love.
I want my conversations to feel like a long summer nights that turn to mornings.
I want writing to feel like an unveiling of filth, dust, & slime.
I want reading to feel like a brilliant white bathtub.
I want food to feel like fuel.
I want service to feel like a wind-chime with no expectation for wind.
I want feeling to feel like a Rumi poem.
I want questioning to feel like grapefruit.
I want my ideas to feel like Martha Graham’s soul prickled.