Sixteen years ago I wrote 25 things I wanted to do with my life, framed as advice for a bewildered alien. Some of those things happened. Some didn’t. A few I no longer want. And there are things on today’s list that I couldn’t have imagined putting words to in 2009.

Time for accounting.

What Happened

Several of the original 25 did happen. I traveled more than I’d imagined — Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, multiple circuits through Europe, stretches of living in places that weren’t home by any historical definition, like Spain and Portugal. I ran a marathon. Then an ultramarathon. Then a few more. I published a book. Then another one. I learned tango. I built apps that strangers actually use.

Checking things off a life list is an interesting experience. You expect to feel some kind of achievement. What you actually feel is more like respectful gratitude — look, this thing happened, it was real — and then a gentle nudge towards what’s next. The list isn’t a destination in itself, it’s just an accountability tool.

What Didn’t Happen and Why I’m Not Sorry

A few items on the 2009 list were things I wanted because I thought I should want them, or because they made for a compelling line in a blog post. I won’t name them because they’re embarrassing in retrospect — they were performances of ambition rather than real desires. Ok, I’ll give one example; I didn’t swim with the dolphins. That looked like a fancy thing to do back then. Now I’m just happy to watch dolphins, if I get close to them, and that’s it.

What I’ve noticed is that the things I actually pursued, I pursued because they were in a way pulling me, not because I’d written them down. The list clarified what I wanted but it didn’t create the wanting. The wanting was already there.

What I’d Add Now That I Couldn’t Have Known to Want

Silence, specifically. Not meditation as a technique — extended periods of deliberate quiet, with no content flowing in. This would have seemed like deprivation to the 2009 version of me, who was running a blog, extremely online, and genuinely excited by the information density of the early internet. Now it seems like a very underrated form of wealth.

Depth in fewer things. The 2009 list had a lot of stuff in it — try this, see that, do this other thing. By now I know that the experiences worth having tend to be ones you return to, not ones you collect by the numbers. Tango was interesting the first night, but it got really interesting only around year three.

Repair. Things I let drift — friendships, family relationships, creative projects I abandoned, like learning to play the guitar — appear on the 2026 list in a way they never would have in 2009. At 35 you’re in expansion mode. Later, you understand that some of what you need to do is go back. Too much expansion creates a lot of management pressure. If you get involved in so many things, you’ll run out of energy, eventually. Better find your place, and stick to it.

What 2026 List Will Look Like

I chose the alien approach in 2009 because it forced me to be honest — you can’t pretend to be someone else with a creature that has no common cultural context. That framing is just as useful now. I am still being honest, only from the top of one and a half decade of lived life.

If a newly arrived consciousness asked me what was worth doing on this planet in 2026 specifically — not in general, but in this exact moment — I’d say: be in physical spaces with people who matter to you, because the pull toward mediated existence is strong and gets stronger. Learn to make something with your hands. Find at least one thing that resists being optimized and stay close to it. Feel it. Live it.