When I turned 27, a friend of mine pointed out that 30 was right around the corner. And while this was kind of terrifying, it was also motivating. The way I saw it, I could (and might, occasionally) spend the next three years freaking out or I could put the milestone to use and make it a deadline for some long terms goals I have bouncing around in my mind. I chose the latter. Wish me luck!

(To find out more about why I chose these goals, read this post)

1. Pay off my student loans
   • Two down, three to go!
2. Get a book published
3. Pay off current credit card
4. Open a new credit card & start earning airline miles
5. Donate blood
6. Hike the Narrows
7. Hike Half Dome
8. Hike Mt. Langley
9. Learn to play the ukulele
10. Go to Harry Potter World in Orlando
11. Take a cooking class
12. Take a Yes Man trip
13. Make my family tree
14. See a Broadway play
15. Go out for a really expensive dinner
16. Go camping
17. Stay at a 5-star hotel
18. Buy a bunch of plants and keep them alive
19. Go to a bottomless mimosa brunch
20. Go on an LA staycation
21. Know at least 20 recipes by heart
22. Read every book on Time’s 100 greatest books of all time
    • 1984
    • The Adventures of Augie March
    • All the King’s Men
    • American Pastoral
    • An American Tragedy
    • Animal Farm
    • Appointment in Samarra
    • Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
    • The Assistant
    • At Swim-Two-Birds
    • Atonement
    • Beloved
    • The Berlin Stories
    • The Big Sleep
    • The Blind Assassin
    • Blood Meridian
    • Brideshead Revisited
    • The Bridge of San Luis Rey
    • Call it Sleep
    • Catch-22
    • The Catcher in the Rye
    • A Clockwork Orange
    • The Confessions of Nat Turner
    • The Corrections
    • The Crying of Lot 49
    • A Dance to the Music of Time
    • The Day of Locust
    • Death Comes for the Archbishop
    • A Death in the Family
    • The Death of the Heart
    • Deliverance
    • Dog Soldiers
    • Falconer
    • The French Lieutenant’s Woman
    • The Golden Notebook
    • Go Tell it on the Mountain
    • Gone with the Wind
    • The Grapes of Wrath
    • Gravity’s Rainbow
    • The Great Gatsby
    • A Handful of Dust
    • The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
    • The Heart of the Matter
    • Herzog
    • Housekeeping
    • A House for Mr. Biswas
    • I, Claudius
    • Infinite Jest
    • Invisible Man
    • Light in August
    • The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe
    • Lolita
    • Lord of the Flies
    • The Lord of the Rings
    • Loving
    • Lucky Jim
    • The Man Who Loved Children
    • Midnight’s Children
    • Money
    • The Moviegoer
    • Mrs. Dalloway
    • Naked Lunch
    • Native Son
    • Neuromancer
    • Never Let Me Go
    • On the Road
    • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
    • The Painted Bird
    • Pale Fire
    • A Passage to India
    • Play it as it Lays
    • Portnoy’s Complaint
    • Possession
    • The Power & the Glory
    • The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
    • Rabbit, Run
    • Ragtime
    • The Recognitions
    • Red Harvest
    • Revolutionary Road
    • The Sheltering Sky
    • Slaughterhouse Five
    • Snow Crash
    • The Sot-Weed Factor
    • The Sound & the Fury
    • The Sportswriter
    • The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
    • The Sun Also Rises
    • Their Eyes Were Watching God
    • Things Fall Apart
    • To Kill a Mockingbird
    • To the Lighthouse
    • Tropic of Cancer
    • Ubik
    • Under the Net
    • Under the Volcano
    • Watchmen
    • White Noise
    • White Teeth
    • Wide Sargasso Sea

23. Fall in Love
24. Make a time capsule to open when I’m 40
25. Learn to drive a stick shift
26. Go curling
27. Stomp grapes and make wine
28. Blow glass
29. Go to a championship game (World Series, Stanley Cup, etc.)
30. Run a marathon (maybe)

For those of you also approaching the milestone of 30, those who are still a ways from it, and those who are a ways past it, may you always know that you have the power to do anything you set your mind do. Age really is just a number, and you can kickass no matter what that number may be.