My Impossible List

For the longest time now, I've had a bucket list in some form or another. However, it was always a nagging reminder of what I hadn't done - never a spur in my side to push me forward. Today I threw out that bucket list and replaced it with something infinitely better: an Impossible List.

Joel Runyan - blogger, stuff-doer, people-inspirer - runs a blog outlining his ideas about doing the impossible
 and living a life that reaches for something beyond what you think you're capable of. A main part of doing this involves developing your own Impossible List - a list of goals you thought were "the sort of things that I assumed the cool guys on TV only ever got to do. The things I never thought that I would be able to do."

The Impossible List is not a bucket list. A bucket list is "made up at one point in time that most people don’t end up actually incorporating into their lives and discard when things get tough." Far from this, the Impossible List is a "fluid, updating status of what’s coming, what’s next and where you’ve come from. It’s always changing, always updating and always evolving. The impossible list isn’t just a piece of paper, it’s a commentary to yourself on how you’re living."

I've spent a lot of time lately contemplating my goals and how little I've done to reach them or improve myself in many areas. When I saw Runyan's impossible list, I was inspired to do my own. And I did.

Here it is:

Life:

- Go out 50 times to be social and develop people-skills

Creative:
- Start a Youtube channel
- Self-publish an illustrated children's book
- Learn to sing well within my range
- Finish Intermediate level piano books
- Finish a portrait in oils
- Finish my Aesculapius painting
- Finish a still-life with fruit in oils
- Finish my 30-lesson watercolor book
- Learn to play Cristofori's Dream

Health Fitness
- Become a morning person
- Fit into my old jeans
- Increase stamina so I can practice dancing for 30+ minutes without being dead-tired

Activities:
- Memorize The Ballad of Reading Gaol 
- Read 3,159 books (beat George Vanderbilt's record)
- Learn to speed-read
- Make $10+ on the stock market

Skills:
- Fluency in Spanish
- Fluency in French or Norwegian
- Semi-fluency in French or Norwegian
- Master 4 soft-shoe dances
- Master the 6 hard-shoe dances
- Learn to waltz
- Learn to use graphic design software
- Become a decent Go player (win 50% of non-practice games)
- Learn to appreciate opera

So, there it is. Let's see how it goes.