Living the List: How Writing Became the Bucket List I Didn’t Know I Was Fulfilling

For a long time, I thought bucket lists were about things you plan.

Places you want to go.
Experiences you want to have.
Moments you imagine yourself arriving at one day.

And Financial Freedom – my favourite, I call it the time and location freedom.

I never thought of writing as one of those things.

And yet, looking back now, I can see it clearly:
Writing was always there, quietly waiting for me to grow into it.

Financial freedom creates time and location independence — but what you do with that freedom is what truly shapes your life. In this reflective essay, I share how writing quietly became one of the most meaningful bucket list goals I’ve ever lived, not because I planned it, but because I finally allowed myself the space to do it.

Writing Was There Before I Knew What It Was

I don’t remember the exact day.

I must have been seven or eight years old.

I had written something in one of my school notebooks — not for homework, not because a teacher asked me to, but because I wanted to. I don’t remember what I wrote. I only remember that my mom came across it. My aunt read it too. They were pleasantly impressed.

They noticed something I didn’t.

They told me writing came naturally to me.

Then my mom encouraged me to enter our town’s annual essay competition. I didn’t win that competition, but I loved writing.

At that age, I didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t a big moment. It didn’t feel like talent or destiny or anything dramatic. It just felt… normal. As if words were a place I already knew how to exist in.

Writing Stayed With Me — Quietly

Through school, writing followed me.

I wrote essays that stood out. Teachers noticed. Other teachers mentioned it, even in classes that weren’t mine – my sister told me years later that the teachers were still talking about my essays in school as a reference to what creative writing is. People commented on how easily it seemed to come to me.

But here’s the strange part:
I still didn’t think of myself as someone who loved writing.

It was just something I was good at.

And there’s a big difference between the two.

Life moved on the way it does.
Career started.
Responsibilities took over.
Writing slipped into the background.

Not gone, just quiet.

Writing in Pieces, Not as a Life

I never stopped writing completely.

I journaled.
I wrote notes. Creative presentations, captions…
I processed thoughts on paper when I needed clarity.

Those notebooks are probably scattered somewhere, in drawers, old boxes, forgotten corners of my life. I don’t even know where most of them are.

Writing was something I did when I needed it.

But it wasn’t something I’d claimed yet.

Learning Everything, But Not Yet Expressing It

Over the years, I learned a lot.

Health coaching.
Nutrition and wellness.
Lifestyle and behavior change.
The stock market — deeply, analytically.
Fashion design and product development.
Entrepreneurship, business development, systems, strategy.

I read constantly. Always have.

Because a writer is a reader first — even when she doesn’t realize she’s a writer yet.

I was absorbing knowledge from everywhere.
But something still felt incomplete.

I was learning, but I wasn’t fully expressing.

When Writing Finally Came Forward

The shift didn’t happen all at once.

It happened when I started writing consistently, for my blog, for my media company, for something that felt bigger than just personal processing.

That’s when I realized something important:

Writing is how I make sense of everything.

It’s how I connect ideas.
How I organize what I know.
How I understand my own thinking.

Without realizing it, writing had moved from the background of my life into the center.

I wasn’t “planning to write someday” anymore.

I was writing.

When You Realize You’re Living the List

What surprised me most was how it felt.

Writing didn’t feel like work.
It didn’t feel draining.
It didn’t feel forced.

It felt emotionally fulfilling.

Even though writing isn’t my “job” in the traditional sense, it’s something I show up for almost every day. It’s how I express what I’ve learned. How I share perspective. How I stay connected to myself.

And that’s when it hit me:

This was a bucket list item, I just never wrote it down.

Writing as Something I Was Always Meant to Do

People often think bucket list goals are dramatic.

But some of the most meaningful ones are quiet.

They’re not things you chase.
They’re things you grow into.

Writing feels like that for me.

It feels natural. Familiar. Grounding.
Like something that was always meant to be part of my life, even when I wasn’t ready for it yet.

Living the List, Not Checking It Off

Living the list doesn’t always look like crossing something out.

Sometimes it looks like realizing:
“I’m already doing the thing I once carried quietly inside me.”

Writing didn’t arrive with applause.
It didn’t feel like an achievement.
It felt like alignment.

And that, I’ve learned, is the real sign you’re living the list.

Final Reflection

Some bucket list goals take you somewhere new.

Others bring you back to yourself.

Writing did that for me.

It became my way of thinking, learning, creating, and sharing — and, in the process, one of the most meaningful bucket-list goals of my life.

Not because I planned it.

But because I finally lived it.

If writing resonates with you

Writing has never been about technique for me — it’s always been about voice, honesty, and discipline.

If you feel called to write — fiction or otherwise — and want to learn from someone who treats writing as both craft and commitment, I highly recommend Sondra Rhimes’ MasterClass on writing for television (writer and creator of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder)*.

It’s about showing up, trusting your voice, and doing the work — consistently.