{"id":65518,"date":"2025-09-05T06:33:55","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T13:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thegoodtrade.com\/?p=65518"},"modified":"2025-09-17T15:51:51","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T22:51:51","slug":"my-summer-bucket-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thegoodtrade.com\/features\/my-summer-bucket-list\/","title":{"rendered":"I Made A Summer Bucket List For My Inner Child, Here’s How It Went"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When was the last time I rolled down a hill?<\/em> I thought to myself in late spring, when, at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, I watched a pair of young siblings holding hands, throwing their bodies into the grass, and tumbling down the grassy green hill. I smiled at their giggling, easy to dismiss as the natural state of kids that young. But then, answering my question, I remembered being fourteen, doing the exact same thing, rolling down the hill outside my house with my best friend the summer before high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had been too old for that, maybe. But we had put it on our summer bucket lists. So we had to do it. That was the last summer I had made a bucket list, wanting to commemorate my final summer before starting high school. I remember it in brief flashes of equally juvenile adventures: Throwing water balloons, face painting, rom-com marathons, and staying up to watch the sunrise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Lately, I felt as though my summers have faded into one brief blur of hundred-degree weather and promises to make the most of it that never come to fruition.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

While I still consider myself to be a summer girl, I realized in that moment that none of them have been as vivid as that one. And lately, I felt as though my summers have faded into one brief blur of hundred-degree weather and promises to make the most of it that never come to fruition. In the past few years, I haven\u2019t taken summer as seriously as I did those years I was making bucket lists. As a freelancer, I even found myself working on my vacations \u2014 the pictures of me in Europe or beside pools in Long Island were always ruined by my bulky laptop in my tote bag or the sight of me hunched over by the pool with everyone else inside of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I\u2019ve gotten older, summer has become an abstract concept rather than something to savor. Instead of embracing the season and all the things I love about it, I make vague promises to enjoy it, but spend every day pulled away by responsibilities and distractions. This year, I decided I wanted to be intentional about the summer I wanted to have \u2014 so I took drastic measures. I made a summer bucket list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The case for making a summer bucket list<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Making a summer bucket list is more than a nod to nostalgia. Thanks to my Capricorn placements, I make lists for everything<\/em>. And I knew that to take my summer seriously, I wanted to approach it with the same tenacity I approach the rest of my life. Like scheduling fun and rest into your daily calendar, I was determined to schedule time to enjoy my summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Research supports this: The best way to achieve your goals is to write them down, make a plan, and get your support system on board.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The research<\/a> supports this: The best way to achieve your goals is to write them down, make a plan, and get your support system on board. Therefore, instead of setting an abstract goal to be more present or promising myself to log off more without making a plan to do so, I decided to turn to the tried-and-true method of creating a bucket list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wasn\u2019t the only one who undertook this endeavor this summer. The idea came from my own reminiscing, but was reinforced by multiple Substack articles and social media posts about people I admire undertaking a similar mission. If it was the summer of anklets and flip flops, it was also the summer of bucket lists. Surrounded by an echo chamber of support and enlisting friends to join me on this whimsical mission<\/a>, I was even more motivated to make a bucket list and tick off as many boxes as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make the most of summer, I split my bucket list into three sections:<\/p>\n\n\n\n