Hi! If you’re new here, I’m magic icelandic crab and this is my bucket list blog. I have a Drifty List (100 items) that tracks my lifetime goals, including my goals for Q2 2026. If you’re not familiar with corporate jargon, a quarter (this is quarter two) is a three-month block. In this case, Q2 is April, May, and June 2026.

Breaking down my goals by quarter certainly helps build progress, but what really works is breaking them up by season. I felt inspired to create a summer bucket list (subgoals) of my huge list to help break things down into more accomplishable feats.

Intro to the Drifty List: A Bucket List Blog

The Drifty List is a list of 100 things I want to do over my lifetime. I figure I’ve got about 40 years left. Sounds morbid, but it’s math, people. You don’t get to where you’re going without a finish line in mind. Some of my items are more challenging than others (see #63 and #100), some just take the right timing (#91), and some are intentionally vague and just for me to know (#39, #30).

Here are my Q2 goals (ending Spring and kicking off Summer 2026):

1. Clock 20 hours of exercise and launch Project BB (adds progress to #23)
2. Consistently track daily protein and fiber for 90 days (adds progress to #37)
3. Pay off both of my credit cards (needed to accomplish #6 and #24)
4. Donate 100 items (needed to accomplish #1 and #9)
5. Write 12 pages a week (needed to accomplish #55)
6. 31. Grow a wildflower garden (highlighted this because it’s a 100 list item)

I know what you’re thinking. That’s too complicated. But hey, let me level with you: if it wasn’t complicated, it wouldn’t get done.

I have a spreadsheet where I’m tracking my weekly progress on really important goals that would otherwise get lost in the sauce.

• It’s easy to say “I want to save money,” but it’s another thing to literally have to look at where all of your money goes.
• It’s easy to say, “I want to exercise more,” but it’s another thing to track your weekly miles and workout hours.
• It’s easy to say, “I want to write more,” but it’s another thing to let a week go by with no new pages written.

Having these goals segmented like this and tracked in a simple spreadsheet is working for me. You have to find what works for you.

But without further ado, here’s how all of this informs My Summer Bucket List (and how you can make one, too!)

Driftygal Summer Bucket List

1. Earn my yellow belt in taekwondo. (yes, I started taekwondo! I love my dojo and my instructor so much.)
2. Lose 10 lbs by my birthday in mid-July. (This one is a doozy. I am actively tapering off a medication that caused 20 lbs of weight gain in six months.)
3. Buy a Bronco. (I have this all mapped out and aligned with paying off my credit cards.)
4. Write the first draft of my novel. (This feels impossible to me right now because I’ve written 0 pages.)
5. Have a clutter-free house. (Another hard one! But I have my husband working on this with me.)
6. Grow a wildflower garden. (I have the seeds and can’t wait to do it!)
7. Book travel to bring my husband to Wilmington (my self-assigned hometown, he hasn’t been there yet, which is wild to me.)
8. Plan my lighthouse trip. (Staying in a lighthouse is one of my Drifty List goals. I may not be able to go this summer, but I want to have it planned.)
9. Buy my son a playset. (This has nothing to do with my personal goals, just something we’re looking forward to.)
10. Start learning Ukrainian again. (This will be hard because I already need to learn some Korean for taekwondo.)
11. Create three BB videos. (I am stoked to launch my BB series….I know you’re intrigued!)
12. Eat at the Waverly. (Another Drifty List item to check off! I want to go with my husband or some of my NYC friends.)
13. Visit Rhode Island. (I just want to go there.)

Making Your Summer Bucket List

I think making bucket lists is an extremely personal and intimate task. You pour your heart, soul, fears, and hopes into it. I’ve met people who have been inspired by my little adventures, and others who have actually been pretty mean about it. I just continue doing it for me. I enjoy aspiring and being navel gazy, I like ruminating in life’s possibilities, and one of my biggest pet peeves is discouragement.

Step One: Visualization

I started my bucket list blog on Pinterest. I haven’t updated it in a while, but I actually have a board for each of my goals. All 100 of them. You can check it out for inspiration or to peek at some of my older goals that have been reshaped.

As much as I enjoy getting into the numbers, visuals go a long way for me. My taekwondo instructor has actually insisted on my recording myself (you have no idea how humbling it is), because being visual is one of the best ways to make progress. I’m a big believer in that. So Pinterest initially helped me. I pulled images that “called” to me and started organizing them into categories. You could do the same, keeping it simple in buckets such as:

• Travel
• Finances
• Fashion
• Food
• Love

It just really depends on who you are and what you’re aspiring to. I also find journaling, scrapbooking, and collage to be really useful. It helps me “think bigger” in terms of what I want.

Step Two: Consult the Rules

When it comes to making a Driftyland-inspired bucket list, I’d challenge you to stick to a few “rules”:

• Don’t ask other people what to put on your bucket list. These are your goals.
• Don’t assign limits to yourself. This is ideation. Anything goes.
• Gut check each of your goals. Do you really want it? Are you willing to work for it?
• Take the real world into consideration (more about this in Step Four).

From this, you can start to create a list that feels “true” to you.

Step Three: Draft a List

This step is simple. Start writing! Anywhere! On a napkin, in a notebook, in the Notes app on your phone (this can also be a goldmine for ideas, as every girl I know has the craziest things in their notes apps). You don’t have to write 100 things, but in my experience, it forced me to want “more” for myself and my future.

Step Four: Balancing the Possible and Impossible

The last one may seem counterintuitive to “anything goes,” but let me explain. I’ve encountered a lot of people in this life who think in one extreme or another: anything is possible, or limitations exist in everything. I think these people have a lot to learn from each other. Often, going too far in one of those directions, the imaginative and the logical, prevents you from movement, period.

The people reaching for the stars and never landing anywhere on Earth may not be applying real-world limits to their planning (or not planning at all). The people who don’t think anything is possible (we all know these people), unintentionally block themselves from greater things because they’re too afraid to want more. I understand that. There is truth to trauma, sickness, poverty, and other unavoidable life circumstances.

So here’s the question I asked when writing each and every Drifty List goal.

• If I had to do this in a set timeframe, how would I get it done?

The answer to that question will unlock everything. Whether you’re a skeptic or not, that forces a response. It triggers a plan. And in this case, planning can be really exciting!

Step Five: Consult Your Jealousy

I LOVE JEALOUSY. It is the key to goal setting. One of my favorite writers/columnists, Heather Havrilesky, calls jealousy her favorite emotion. Her thought is that jealousy teaches you more about yourself and who you want to be.

I, like anyone else, can feel jealousy. However, these days, I just find myself feeling a lot of admiration for others. To me, jealousy is just that: mean admiration. For full context/transparency, here are things that have made me feel jealous lately:

• A totally bomb ass mom at taekwondo with a purple belt. She was totally ripped. It reminded me of how far I have to go and what I will need to do to reach my physical goals.
• Every girl I see on TikTok who has racked up her “countries visited” list beyond 40. It just pushes me to get better with finances and planning so I can do the same.
• I am forever jealous of Jemima Kirke and Annemarie Tendler. I just admire them both for their fearlessness and creativity.
• A woman my age spending time with her elderly parent.

If you feel stuck with your list, take a crack at documenting your jealousy, and examine what that says about what’s missing in your life.

Step Six: Get Excited

Excitement over a goal means you’re on the right track. If you document a goal and feel any of these emotions: dread, anxiety, boredom, and so forth, they are probably goals you want to accomplish for the wrong reasons. Do keep in mind that some goals will require a lot of work. That shouldn’t be confused with you “not wanting” to do it; instead, it’s you anticipating that some of life’s best things don’t come easily.

That being said…. some things do. And they should. I never documented it, but for example, I always said I would get married again if I found my soul mate. Otherwise, I wouldn’t settle. It took what felt like forever (a lot of bad dates, heartbreak, but also a lot of fun and things learned about myself and others), but I finally met my husband in 2024, and we just clicked. Relationships are work, but I still feel excited every single day that I’m married to T. He’s an amazing person, and undeniably, the right person for me.

Step Seven: Polish Your List

Now, this is a Summer Bucket List that I’m advising on, not an entire list. I’ll try to publish a post later about bucket lists in general, but it’ll be pretty similar. I feel starting broadly helps you get your feet under you, and then, narrowing your big list into a “season-specific” bucket list will be easier. From your big list, try to pick things that you could make progress on or complete by the end of August. I chose 13 items, but you can do as many or as few as you want.

Making Your Summer Bucket List

Need help? Give me a shout. I don’t usually do this, but it strikes me that this may not come easily. I’d love to encourage you and share my struggles to keep you motivated (for example, I am very sore from taekwondo and was not aware some of these muscles existed). Someone once told me that they felt “If magic icelandic crab could do it, they could do it,” in relation to one of their goals. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Were they saying if it was easy enough for me, it was easy enough for them?

I finally rationalized that I was an average person trying to do cool things, and someone finding inspiration from that was pretty great. So take it from me: if I can do it, you can, too.

Email me if you want help with your bucket list: magicicelandiccrab (at) gmail (dot) com. If you email me junk or mean things, I will put a crab hex on you.