Day 19 — Bucket List (as of 2023)!
Or how to enjoy and set a goal for my life.
The advent calendar has begun again this year, and every year, I have quite a bit of trouble coming up with material for it. This year, I was able to be involved in a variety of works, such as working on Customer Success for new products and continuing to deliver user community, article content and online seminars to our customers. However, as usual, I would also like to share something unrelated to our business this year.
I joined the company as a new graduate and am now in my fourth year of work. I enjoy being involved in various tasks and having fulfilling days. On the other hand, however, I tend to neglect what I want to do, my hobbies, and time to refresh myself. I have very few opportunities to watch manga and anime, which I used to love, and I don’t even know what’s popular now, and even if I did, I wouldn’t read them. Eventually, I begin to feel the fear that I may live without knowing what it is that I like. (No wonder self-help books are so popular. We want some guidelines because we don’t know what to do to decide our own life by ourselves.)
Well, after such agonizing days, I decided to make a “bucket list,” a list of things I want to do first to decide what I want to do for myself …because it is important to make a todo list for everything, and by managing tasks accordingly, we can organize things and proceed (sounds very much like a self-help book, doesn’t it?)
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So I wrote out a “bucket list for five years,” a list of things I want to do in about five years. At first, I could write about 100 things, but after writing about 60 things, I had no more ideas….
Since the year is almost over, I will try to excerpt some of them in this article as the 2023 version. The contents themselves are completely subjective and are nothing more than personal wishes, but I hope they will be helpful for your “to-do” lists.
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- Drinking Mexican cola.
I entered this entry because I have heard that Mexican cola tastes different. I like Coke a lot and usually drink it when I go to hangouts, but it seems that Mexican Coke tastes “a little better” due to differences in sweeteners and other factors. I would like to try it someday, but it seems to be difficult to get in Japan, so the only way to get it seems to be to go to Mexico or the U.S.
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6. Watch 75 movies every year.
For some reason, I watch fewer movies than when I was a student. I watch them on weekends, and now I only need to watch 60 of them. My “to-watch list” is over 960 movies, and it will take me more than 15 years to finish watching them by a simple calculation.
Similarly, there are “38. look through all the books on my bookshelf at home” and “61. read 40 books a year.” I want to do something about my everlasting 積読 (that’s a convenient Japanese word, isn’t it?).
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14. “Eating Butter Chicken Curry in India.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7rc90I_C6M
I am sure that everyone has watched some very tasty videos on YouTube late at night, including Indian curry. As shown in this video, I would like to try to eat something from that country in that country someday. I would like to experience something that I can eat in Japan if I want to, or something that exists as a culture in a completely different place than the original, even though it is available in everyday life. So I would like to feel the difference between the butter chicken curry at an Indian restaurant in Japan, which I eat 2 or 3 times a month, and the ”real” Indian curry.
Similar topics on the list are “17. Eating crab dishes in Korea,” “20. Enjoying authentic afternoon tea in England,” and “41. Eating fish and chips in England.” I want to actually go there and experience for myself what is sold in Japan but is original in another country or what I have seen in books or movies.
Likewise, as going abroad with a specific purpose, I have “37. To take “the picture” at Abbey Road” and “51. To take a picture of the streets and lampposts in Europe with the snow falling.” This is also an adventurous spirit to see if what I have seen many times in photos and movies exists.
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Now that I’ve made a list, I honestly wish I had made it when I was a student, and I’m sure there will be many more as I start a family and my life stage changes, but for now, it’s just a guidepost for next year.
Check out other 2023 HENNGE Advent Calendar articles here.
