NP: The Only Ones - Some One Who Cares

I'm a fan/user of the website 43 Things - the idea is to put together a list of up to 43 goals and then publicly document your progress. You can choose from already created goals, make up your own, whatever.

Most of my goals have been sitting on my list for a year or more with little to no progress made. Occasionally, I delete a few either because I decide they're stupid (Beat all the Zelda Games) or because they're not going to happen in the foreseeable future (Eat at In-N-Out Burger...yeah, I reach for the stars). And some of the ones I have accomplished, I haven't so much "accomplished" and instead just did once or twice so I could check it off and list something else. Did I go letterboxing once? Sure. Did I go letterboxing twice? Nuh-uh.

But even though my list is mostly stagnant, I still get a kick going through other people's goals and entries, and I occasionally stumble across a potentially valuable resource regarding lock picking or juggling. So when I saw that 43 Things was coming out with a book called Dream It, List It, Do It, I went to Barnes and Noble and bought it.

Now for some reason or another, I thought the book would focus on a handful of goals and include personal stories or resources - something along the lines of Get a Hobby or You Can Do It!, only broader in scope than the former and hopefully not as lame as the latter. And because it was holiday season and I hate crowds, I didn't bother to even crack it open to look at it first, for fear I'd waste precious seconds around noisy strangers.

But it's not a journalistic look at goal-pursuing nor a conglomerate of resources. It's mostly just one long list of goals, with the occasional anonymous personal paragraph about, say, dancing in the rain or a resource sidebar about, say, changing your name lazily inserted in intervals. And what's most infuriating about the book is the empty boxes next to each item, as if this book is actually going to function as 4,000 things to do before I die checklist. I'm sure I'll be checking off "Start a non-toxic housecleaning company" or "Become Aquaman" any day now.

I'll give 43 Things a pass for trying for the quick buck, because they're an expansive social networking site that keeps their advertising revenue to the ubiquitous but innocuous google ads and because I was too big of a dolt to skim the fat little book beforehand, but really, I feel burned.