It’s a cup of tea in my hand as I look out over the garden, listening to music through my headphones. It’s the feel of warm wood beneath my chin as I play the violin. It’s admiring the neighbors’ gardens and noticing the subtle shifts as the seasons progress on my walks with Pixel. It’s spending Sunday afternoons in my own garden, pulling weeds and watching everything grow. And of course, dear reader, there are long, lazy Saturday mornings filled with cat snuggles.
Small daily or weekly rituals. Almost stolen moments that fill my days with joy.
Life, dear reader, is not always adventures. Sometimes escape consists of a journal entry or a thirty-minute yoga session. Other times, it’s a book and a cup of coffee on your porch. Lately, it has been a morning visit from a cardinal, courtesy of a bird feeder I recently installed outside my bedroom window to entertain my cats.
I have inadvertently taken up birdwatching.
I may or may not be trying to learn his song on my violin.
A girl needs hobbies, dear reader, and in my fast-approaching middle age, I have decided to go full-on eccentric. I shall soon be donning enormous hats and calling people darling. ’Tis a cruel fate, but I plan on embracing it.
But underneath all of these little eccentricities is something more important. Each of these habits fulfills a different need.
The violin and poetry fulfill my need to create. When I play music, I lose myself in the notes, sometimes reaching an almost meditative state where the sheet music ceases to be something I consciously process. My fingers simply know where to go. In poetry, I get to play with form, sound, rhythm, and the compression of ideas. I may spend hours contemplating a sonnet, drop a villanelle onto the page in a few minutes, and then follow it with free verse where I experiment with repetition, alliteration, rhyme, and half-rhyme.
On my walks and in my garden, I connect with nature. There is something grounding about putting my hands into the dirt, watching the seasons change, and noticing things that would otherwise pass unnoticed. And of course, there is Pixel, who seems to believe that every walk is an important expedition requiring his immediate participation.
A cup of tea or coffee gives me permission to stop. Sometimes I listen to music. Sometimes I simply sit and think. Sometimes I read or write in my journal. The ritual itself creates a small pause in the day, a moment to breathe before rushing into whatever comes next.
These things may seem insignificant.
They aren’t.
This blog is much more than Bucket List Adventures. It is also about building a Bucket List Life.
A Bucket List Life is not one where you are constantly chasing the next spectacular experience. It is a life where those spectacular experiences are woven into something that already feels meaningful. Travel can be wonderful, but if you need a two-week vacation every year simply to tolerate the other fifty weeks, perhaps the more interesting question is not “Where should I go next?” but “What is missing from the life I come home to?”
One way to begin answering that question is to look at the different areas of your life and consider whether they are receiving enough attention.
Some of you may recognize this concept from Dr. Bill Hettler’s Wellness Wheel, developed in the 1970s as a way of examining different dimensions of wellness. The model considers areas such as physical, social, occupational, intellectual, environmental, spiritual, financial, and emotional wellness. The premise is fairly simple: you can be doing wonderfully in several areas while struggling significantly in others.
Travel might temporarily touch several of those areas. A trip could provide physical activity, social connection, intellectual stimulation, environmental novelty, and emotional rejuvenation all at once. But eventually you come home.
Your luggage gets unpacked.
The vacation photos get posted.
And Monday morning arrives.
The goal, then, isn’t to use travel to fill every empty space in your life. It is to build enough small sources of nourishment into your ordinary routine that you aren’t depending on the next vacation to make you feel alive.
For me, my violin and poetry provide intellectual and emotional stimulation. Tea and coffee, often accompanied by music, reading, or a devotional, give me opportunities for reflection and spiritual connection. Walking and gardening provide physical movement and environmental connection. My cats provide companionship. Friends and family fill another part of the picture entirely.
None of these things fills an entire category by itself. Nor do they need to.
They’re simply little threads woven into the larger fabric of my life.
And that’s an important distinction because wellness should not become another thing we feel obligated to optimize.
You do not need to maximize every category.
You don’t need a perfectly balanced Wellness Wheel.
You need to notice where you feel nourished and where you feel hungry.
Perhaps you look at your own life and realize that you’re getting plenty of intellectual stimulation from your career but almost no physical movement. Maybe your answer isn’t another vacation but a weekly hiking group, a dance class, gardening, yoga, or simply walking around your neighborhood after dinner.
Maybe you spend your entire day surrounded by people and realize that what you’re actually missing is solitude.
Maybe your work is deeply meaningful but you’re financially stressed.
Maybe you’re financially comfortable but have lost touch with creativity.
Maybe your social life is full but you haven’t spent any time alone with your own thoughts in months.
The point isn’t to judge yourself for what is missing. It’s to notice.
Then ask yourself what small, repeatable habit might help.
And make it something you actually want to do.
We don’t need to turn every empty space into a self-improvement project. If you’re deficient in intellectual stimulation, perhaps you don’t need to take an online course. Maybe you want to learn about birds. Maybe you want to read about astrophysics. Maybe you want to learn German, pick up a violin, study medieval history, or finally understand how that strange machine in the kitchen actually works. I’m currently studying the Drottkvaett form from Old Norse Court Poetry and seeing if I can’t apply it to modern English. It’s a lot harder than it sounds, but so much fun!
If you’re lacking physical movement, you don’t necessarily need to join a gym. Maybe you want to garden. Maybe you want to walk around your neighborhood and admire everyone’s flowers. Maybe you want to take up dancing or sword fighting!
The best habit is often the one you will actually keep because it brings you some measure of joy.
That, ultimately, is what I mean by building a Bucket List Life.
Keep the adventures.
Absolutely take the trip to Italy. Go see the concert. Try glassblowing. Wander through the strange old arcade. Eat the deep-dish pizza in Chicago when your flight gets delayed.
Put extraordinary things on your list.
But don’t save all of your living for those moments.
Build a life that contains little adventures on an ordinary Tuesday. Find things you look forward to on Sunday morning. Give yourself reasons to put down your phone, step outside, make something, learn something, call someone you love, or simply sit quietly with a cup of tea.
Because eventually, every bucket-list trip ends.
The airplane brings you home. The suitcase gets put away. The souvenirs find their places on the shelf.
And then there is Tuesday.
Make Tuesday a life worth coming home to.
Budget Bliss: Bucket List 