goals

The List

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Post image for The List

As promised, here is what I plan to do before I die. This list is now a permanent addition to Raptitude.com, and the most up-to-date version can be found by clicking “The List” tab on the top of any page.

If you want to make your own list, here is the comprehensive guide to making one that you will honor.

A few notes:

You’ll notice my list is very travel-heavy. One of my major goals in life is to achieve a location-independent income, which will allow me to move around the globe without the constraint of limited vacation days. Without the intention to live this kind of lifestyle, my list would not be realistic to me and I’d probably soon forget about it. I have tried to eliminate redundancies, but some are inevitable. I want to see the Louvre and tour Paris, but it is unlikely I’ll do one and not the other. Still, both are important and I don’t want to leave either off my list. The list is not complete. I cannot be sure I’ve thought of everything that deserves to be on it, but this is a pretty good start.

Here goes.   Read More

by David on September 10, 2009
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How to Make a Life List You’ll Actually Do: A Comprehensive Guide

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surfing at sunset

There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way. ~ Christopher Morley

The principle of the life list is simple. You list all the things you want to do in life, and cross them off as you do them. Try to do them all before you die.

It’s easy and fun to make one, but to create a list of dreams that will actually come true is not quite as simple as merely writing down what you want.

You may have made a life list before. Where is it now? Probably in a landfill, like most life lists. It’s too easy to let life get in the way. You get busy, tied up with more immediate concerns, and your dreams become less and less relevant to your actual life.

But not everyone’s list gets abandoned. John Goddard is known best for living out the ambitious life list he made at age fifteen.

Even though it includes many difficult and humongous items (for example, number 113 is “Become proficient in the use of a plane, motorcycle, tractor, surfboard, rifle, pistol, canoe, microscope, football, basketball, bow and arrow, lariat and boomerang,”) as of today he’s checked off 111 of his 127 goals, and some are partially complete.

Why did that 15 year-old boy’s list go on to define a lifetime of achievement and adventure, while most life lists are eventually forsaken?

Because he really meant it.   Read More

by David on September 7, 2009
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Defensive Eating – Raptitude Experiment No. 4

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pastries

So I get on one wagon and fall off another.

My third official Raptitude experiment, 30 Days Without Drugs, was a resounding success in my eyes. I accomplished my goal and dismantled a persistent problem in my life. I’m now much less inclined to compromise my state of mind with the offhanded use of alcohol and caffeine. Now a month since the experiment ended, my lifestyle seems to be permanently changed for the better.

But during that time, I’ve slipped into an apathetic attitude towards food intake. I find myself eating more, and more often.

My workout routine also fell off the map, as it was already starting to by the end of my slightly less successful kettlebell experiment back in May and June.

As a result, I’ve put on an unappetizing ring of midsection fat. It shrunk while I was working out regularly, but now it’s back, trying to make me its permanent home. I want to get rid of it, which means getting rid of the habit that put it there.  Read More

by David on September 3, 2009
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Seek Professional Help

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ding!

Asking for help has always been so hard for me. I always hated it when I couldn’t do something for myself. I felt like a failure. I was so used to being asked for help, I sort of felt like I’d lose my identity as “the knower” if I put myself on the other side of the table.

I flunked in college because I was utterly terrified to ask for help. Admitting I was lost and needed help was, for me, like stepping out of a plane without a parachute. Even if I wanted to do it, my body wouldn’t budge. Believe it or not, through twelve years of grade school I did not once say, “I don’t know how to do this. Please show me.”

I would do anything else instead. Skip class to study it on my own, work backwards from the solution in the back of the text, or most often, simply avoid it for the rest of my life.

Naturally, this strategy caused some problems. Read More

by David on August 20, 2009
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Beer and Coffee: My Problem Children, Put to Bed at Last

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drinking man

Thirty-two days ago, David began an experiment wherein he vowed not to touch any drugs for thirty days.

And I’m a new man. Just like that.

This last month has definitely begun a new chapter for me, and perhaps closed an old one.

To recap quickly: thirty days ago I was a daily coffee drinker, and I had a habit of drinking alcohol to excess on a weekly-ish basis. I have spend the last month completely un-high, with not so much as an aspirin passing through my system. The last time I went thirty days without a drug was probably over ten years ago, when I was a minor.

Though I have never been (quite) out of control, certain drugs established an alarming regularity in my life. I used them so casually, and for so long, that I suspected they might actually be necessary to hold my work and social lives together. Getting drunk and buzzing out on coffee had become too normal an activity for me to still feel okay about it. I didn’t want drugs to be part of who I was.

So I set out to discover who I was without them. Read More

by David on August 6, 2009
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The Results Are in! — Experiment No. 2: David Before and After Kettlebells

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Post image for The Results Are in! — Experiment No. 2: David Before and After Kettlebells To recap for new readers, nine weeks ago I declared I would school myself in the art of the Russian kettlebell.  I resolved to work with the antique freeweight, Soviet commando-style, in accordance with Pavel Tsatsouline’s Enter the Kettlebell.

Being somewhat a novice, I did the first of two programs, humbly named the Program Minimum.  It consists of two exercises you’ve probably never heard of, both of which I described in the original post.  Kettlebells have a steep learning curve, and are about as forgiving as concrete, but I did okay.   Read More

by David on July 23, 2009
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30 Days Without Drugs — Raptitude Experiment No. 3

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Alcohol

This experiment commenced on schedule on July 6, 2009.  See my progress log here.

As much as I don’t like so say it this explicitly, drugs have been a significant part of my life for some time now.

I know I’m far from alone.  Drugs use is very common.  Drugs are a part of human culture everywhere in different capacities: as medicine, as recreation, as escape, as tradition, as sacraments.

I try to avoid the common distinction between drugs that are legal or illegal, socially acceptable or not socially acceptable. A drug is a drug, regardless of the government’s opinion of it.

That unfair distinction creates a lot of undue prejudice and ignorance, it alienates people and ruins lives, but I’ll save that debate for later.  I know most coffee drinkers would not identify themselves as drug users, but they are.  It’s unfortunate that the term ‘drug user’ has come to be a condescending slur rather than just the objective descriptor it should be.

Partly because of the culture I live in, both the broader culture of North America, and my own local combination of friends and influences, I have become habituated to using certain drugs regularly.  People all around me use them to different degrees. Read More

by David on July 6, 2009
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Monday Update

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I’m finally moved in to my new place, and my writing schedule can return to normal. Finally! Thursday I’ll be able to publish a full-length article, provided I remember how to write.

The move went very smoothly, thank you to everybody who asked. I’ve got a lot of unpacking to do, but I’m no longer waiting on anyone else. I’m relaxing in my new pad, surrounded by boxes of my own stuff, listening to the comfortable tunes of The Tragically Hip. I feel at home already.

Experiment No. 2 has been derailed slightly, in part by my move, but more by a nagging stiff neck. I aborted two workouts because I thought I might be aggravating it and I didn’t want to be out of commission longer. I also had an awkwardly-timed five-day camping trip in there, and a hectic moving week, so I will be extending the experiment by three weeks. Two for the time I missed, and one to get myself up to where I was.

It was originally intended to end this past Friday, but instead it will end Friday July 17, recap and ‘after’ pictures to be posted July 20.

Experiment No. 3 is in the planning stages. I’ve decided to expand its scope, you’ll see what I mean when I announce it.

Thank you all for your patience, and welcome to summertime.

by David on June 29, 2009
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The Year With Two Summers

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One tree

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

~Albert Camus

This year is my 29th year on earth, and I’ve decided to make it the most memorable and remarkable year I’ve ever had.  My entire adult life I have felt the unsettling feeling that I am not living up to my potential, and finally — just this year — that feeling is gone.  I’m cruising, not treading water like before.

The choice to build a blog emerged as part of a personal renaissance of sorts, a shift in priorities that has changed my life dramatically over the last year or so.  I’ve finally reached a point where I’m organized and clear-headed enough to be continuously moving towards what I really want in life.  I’m learning a language, getting in shape, getting fantastically organized, and honing skills I’ve long neglected. Read More

by David on May 27, 2009
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Does Your Story Have This Common Weakness?

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Post image for Does Your Story Have This Common Weakness?

I always wanted to be Indiana Jones.  I was the only nine-year-old on the block with a fedora and a genuine bullwhip.  I watched the movies all the time.  I couldn’t get enough ancient tombs and hidden doors and mine-cart chases.  That was the appeal for me, the action.  It wasn’t until I grew up a bit that I started to actually understand the plots of some of the movies I was watching.  It wasn’t just a familiar parade of fascinating scenes, those scenes actually caused each other.  None of them stood alone.

The deeper message in the story always went over my head too.  It was the spectacle I was interested in, the romance and drama, not so much the people.  I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark several times before I even realized that the dorky professor at the beginning was Indiana Jones.

As I grew up, I realized that the real power of story was in the development of the characters, not the exploding jeeps.  Read More

by David on May 22, 2009
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