The Great Goal Rush: How Creating a Yearly Bucket List Changed My Life

In my spare time, I’ve mastered the art of staying joyful while the world is burning.

How, you ask? 

My secret weapon: a yearly bucket list. 

For over a decade, the Great Goal Rush, the name of my yearly bucket list, has kept me dreaming, laughing, and asking for more. Thanks to this list, I’ve learned how to unicycle, I floated above Lake Tahoe in a hot air balloon, and even visited a nude beach… in New Jersey. (Yes, that’s a thing.)

The Great Goal Rush has also taken me to some unexpected places, like being featured on the cover of The Washington Post. A goal to “protest something” turned into an unforgettable moment for me and my husband, who I started this tradition of creating a yearly bucket list with (“protest something” was his goal and the reason why we landed on a newspaper cover). Through these adventures, I’ve discovered the magic of simply asking, the importance of dreaming out loud, and the kindness of friends, family, and even total strangers.

In 2024, I had a lightbulb moment: over a decade of living by a yearly bucket list hadn’t just added excitement to my life, it had rewired my brain. This playful little tradition, born out of curiosity and a need for momentum, had quietly become my compass through some of life’s darkest seasons. It got me through a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. It carried me through postpartum Covid times in April 2020. And while working at a humanitarian organization covering war zones, natural disasters, and global suffering, I kept getting asked: How do you do this work without falling apart?

The answer, surprisingly, wasn’t just retail therapy (though that helped - I call them emotional support shoes). It was this system – this joyful, intentional, goal-setting practice that kept me grounded and dreaming. And suddenly, I realized: Is this my superpower? Should I be sharing this?

That question, the story about this experience in my heart felt like it was going to burst – it prevented me from sleeping.

So in 2024, I answered it the only way I knew how: I wrote a book, The Great Goal Rush: How Creating a Yearly Bucket List Changed My Life (TBD on when it will be published).