100 things

This is a list of 100 things I want to do before I die. Why? Because I can.

  1. Bake an apple-bacon pie.
  2. Be a (card carrying) member of 5 different ‘clubs’ (1, 2 and 3 of 5).
  3. Become a (renowned) expert at something or other.
  4. Become an organ donor.
  5. Choose a word or a phrase and never use it again.
  6. Climb the Onze Lieve Vrouwetoren in Amersfoort. (2011-07-12, picture)
  7. Complete my Meat Loaf collection.
  8. Contribute to an open-source project.
  9. Cook a perfect meal.
  10. Create something for the ages.
  11. Cross a country on bike.
  12. Cross the Afsluitdijk on a bicycle in less than 90 minutes.
  13. Decide where to go on holiday in the very last moment.
  14. Do or don’t do something for 365 days straight.
  15. Don’t shave at all for at least a month.
  16. “Later, when I’m all grown up, I want a Mini.” Drive a Mini or other very small car.
  17. Find a job in a completely other field.
  18. Find a theme song.
  19. Find at least ten variations on Like the Pet Shop Boys said, ‘What have I—what have I—what have I done to deserve this?’ and Om de grote filosoof Frank Boeijen te citeren, ‘Zeg me dat het niet zo is.’ that are as iconic and are appropriate for all kinds of occasions.
  20. Find the perfect place to live, and live there.
  21. Find free/open source alternatives for all unlicensed programs on my PC.
  22. Finish all books I’ve bought, started in and put aside before reaching the end:
    • Sir Thomas Malory — Le Morte d’Arthur
    • Stephen King — Danse Macabre
    • Edgar Allen Poe — Spirits of the Dead: Tales and Poems
    • The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
  23. Get a drivers’ license.
  24. Get rid of all dependencies, i.e., if I can’t function without coffee, get off it.
  25. Get something published.
  26. Give a good speech, talk, presentation, or whatever.
  27. Go the extra mile.
  28. Go to Hell.
  29. Have a decent conversation in German. (Disclaimer: I barely speak German.)
  30. Have a home office, and make good use of it.
  31. Have an (accidental) month-long blogging streak. (January 2018, thanks to the 30 Day Song Challenge)
  32. Inspire someone to write a song about me.
  33. Interview someone reasonably well known for some sort of publication.
  34. Invent a holiday, and have it celebrated by others.
  35. Just sit and observe something for at least an hour straight.
  36. Just sit and watch the sunset.
  37. Karaoke!
  38. Learn a new language.
  39. Learn how to play a song on an instrument.
  40. Learn to eat everything.
  41. Learn to read, write and speak French.
  42. Learn to shave with a straight razor.
  43. Leave the continent.
  44. Let someone else have the chance I missed.
  45. Live near the beach, preferably in a moderately warm climate.
  46. Live the dream.
  47. Live to tell the tale.
  48. Make a bicycle trip around the IJsselmeer.
  49. Make a boattrip that lasts more then 24 hours.
  50. Make a list of 40 books to read before my 40th birthday.
  51. Make a photo worthy of blowing up and framing.
  52. Make an extensive trip by public transport only.
  53. Make the perfect mixtape.
  54. Meet someone, and ask her on a date in the space of a few hours.
  55. Monitize my knowledge of useless trivia once more.
  56. Own an old fashioned typewriter.
  57. Own an original work of art. (drawing 1, 2)
  58. Participate in an air guitar championship.
  59. Participate in NaNoWriMo, and win.
  60. Perfect my crème brûlée making skills.
  61. Perform on stage.
  62. Quit a job in a heat-of-the-moment, well-screw-you-guys-I’m-going-home fit of logic.
  63. Quit working altogether and use the free time to do something worthwhile.
  64. Read all Dark Tower books back to back.
  65. Read All Harry Potter Novels Back To Back.
  66. Read all novels written by Stephen King.
  67. Read the books on my list of 40 books to read before my 40th birthday before my 40th birthday. (36/40)
    1. J.M. Barrie — Peter Pan
    2. Samuel Beckett — Waiting for Godot
    3. Ferdinand Bordewijk — Karakter
    4. Mikhail Bulgakov — The Master and Margarita
    5. Lewis Carroll — Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass
    6. Italo Calvino — If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller
    7. Joseph Campbell — The Hero wth a Thousand Faces
    8. Miguel de Cervantes — Don Quixote
    9. Hugo Claus — Het verdriet van België
    10. Erich von Däniken — Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past
    11. Alexandre Dumas — The Count of Monte Cristo
    12. Mark Dunn — Ibid: A Life
    13. Erasmus — Lof der Zotheid
    14. F. Scott Fitzgerald — The Great Gatsby
    15. Anne Frank — Het Achterhuis
    16. Jostein Gaarder — Sophie’s World
    17. William Gibson — Neuromancer
    18. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — Die Leiden des jungen Werther
    19. Brothers Grimm — Fairytales
    20. Joseph Heller — Catch-22
    21. W.F. Hermans — De donkere kamer van Damokles
    22. Homerus — Odyssey
    23. Aldous Huxley — Brave New World
    24. Franz Kafka — Der Prozess
    25. Rudyard Kipling — The Jungle Book
    26. H.D. Lawrence — Lady Chatterley’s Lover
    27. Harper Lee — To Kill a Mockingbird
    28. Herman Melville — Moby Dick
    29. John Milton — Paradise Lost
    30. Alan Moore / David Lloyd — V for Vendetta
    31. Vladimir Nabokov — Lolita
    32. Nescio — De uitvreter / Titaantjes
    33. Gerard Reve — De avonden
    34. J.D. Salinger — The Catcher in the Rye
    35. Bram Stoker — Dracula
    36. Strunk & White — The Elements of Style
    37. Mark Twain — The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
    38. Kurt Vonnegut — Slaughterhouse-Five
    39. Oscar Wilde — The Picture of Dorian Gray
    40. Marion Zimmer Bradley — The Mists of Avalon
  68. Remove money as a concern.
  69. Run Linux as primary operating system on every computer I own.
  70. See a concert in the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam.
  71. See a full solar eclipse.
  72. See a movie in an empty theater.
  73. See a play by Shakespeare. (Orkater, “Richard III”, 2011-08-16)
  74. See Beethoven’s Ninth in concert. (2011-07-19)
  75. See the northern lights.
  76. See the stars in the Sahara or any other place similarly devoid of light pollution.
  77. Send a message in a bottle.
  78. Shout it from the rooftops.
  79. Sniff ancient culture in Greece.
  80. Spend a week without touching a computer.
  81. Spend a week in silence.
  82. Spend some time with good company on an otherwise deserted island.
  83. Start a photography project documenting the soullessness of the interchangable shopping streets in The Netherlands.
  84. Take a course in creative writing.
  85. Take some great photo’s at a graveyard.
  86. Take the road less traveled.
  87. Visit all ‘classic’ European microstates:
  88. Visit all museums in Amersfoort:
  89. Visit all occupied inhabited Waddeneilanden:
  90. Visit Stonehenge.
  91. Visit the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia.
  92. Visit the Louvre in Paris, France.
  93. Visit the piramide van Austerlitz. (pictures )
  94. Visit the Prado in Madrid, Spain.
  95. Visit the pyramids.
  96. Wake up and smell the coffee.
  97. Walk around an island.
  98. Win an award.
  99. Write something (a story, an article, a paper, whatever) that’s really, really good.
  100. Write a letter to the editor.
  101. Officially defect from leave the Roman Catholic Church
  102. Cross out all entries in this list and start over.