My Bucket List (as of 2024)

Clare disapproves of bucket lists: 'Be in the moment!'

And I secretly agree with her. I don't believe in bucket lists either. Daoism reminds us that life isn't a checklist to conquer, but a process to embrace. A bucket list, with its rigid goals, traps you outside the present, the very moment where true fulfillment lies. Avoid the temptations of the list: strive to merge with the Dao...

Yet here are my bucket list items:

1. Keep my wife happy - ongoing (blog post).
2. Climb Pen-y-Fan - achieved in September 2012 (blog post).
3. Program a working theorem prover for the Predicate Calculus - achieved in March 2017 (blog post).
4. Understand General Relativity to the extent of grasping quantitatively the precession of the perihelion of Mercury - achieved (June 10th 2019, blog post) using the spacetime metric, not via tensors and differential geometry.
5. Create items of art for my grandchildren - achieved (2019, 2021) through the writing skills of (pseudonymous) Adam Carlton: Freyja’s Deathbed Conversations: and other stories and Donatien's Children.
6. Learn the T'ai Chi 24 step Yang-style short form - accomplished end of 2022.
7. Learn the T'ai Chi sword form - started January 2023, achieved June 2023.
8. Pass first grading in Shotokan Karate (orange belt) - achieved November 2022.
9. Be received into the Catholic Church - achieved Easter 2023.
10. Get my personal philosophy sorted out - ongoing (blog post).

Removed from bucket within the last five years:

1. Learning Quantum Field Theory - too difficult!
2. Understanding General Relativity via tensors/differential geometry - too hard.
3. Improving guitar, eg fingerpicking - my fingers hurt too much.
4. Achieve brown belt in karate: retired June 23 with yellow belt (7th kyu) due to chronic sciatica.