New Year’s Resolutions

Dear Digital Diary,

Just kidding. My only resolution is to complete my bucket list.

When I was younger, my family would set goals for the year. It wasn’t ever called resolutions, so I wasn’t super aware what that all meant until I got social media in eighth grade. The concept of it was always to lose or gain something else: lose fifteen pounds, get better at french.

I never understood exactly why it was designed this way, losing or gaining, and purposefully making note to begin this new endeavor over the start of a new year.

I believe that a new year is a new opportunity. Not to lose or gain necessarily, but a chance to live another year to the fullest. And thus began my yearly bucket list – it’s not a list of requirements that I feel are necessary for me to achieve to prove I lived out my year by productivity, but a list to show just how much one can experience in a year.

The Bucket List of a 20-Something Year Old in Modern America (2026)

Travel to an island
Go camping
Sleep underneath the stars
Publish something
Visit a new city
Travel outside the country
Get a job that I enjoy
Go to a concert
Take a road trip
Go swimming after dark
Surf a wave
Take a dance class
Get an apartment
See a show
Learn to sail
Sell my art
Swing on a swingset
Snorkel
Participate in a wine tasting
See a bear
Go to a sports game (and see my team win)
Go somewhere where French is spoken
Plant a plant
Travel somewhere with my favorite cousins
Ride a horse
Stay by the seaside
Get film developed
Take a trip in a van
Take a train in a foreign country
Watch a film that my sister is in
Get a new therapist
Write a letter
Make a birthday cake
Freelance
Visit a friend in another state
Sing karaoke
Paddleboard
Celebrate my birthday with people I love
Watch a new Marvel movie in theaters
Go on a trip with my sister
Buy a new record
Take a ferry
Hike a mountain
Enter a contest
Celebrate an anniversary
See a lion
Attend a wedding (or crash one)
Read at least 26 books
Teach something

Dear Digital Diary

the author