Don’t Wait for Someday: Why You Should Start Your Bucket List Now
The Myth of “Someday”
We all have one — that mental list of dream destinations, half-scribbled in a notebook or stored somewhere between wishful thinking and Google Maps. It’s the sunrise over Angkor Wat, the train through the Alps, the road trip along Australia’s Great Ocean Road. We tell ourselves we’ll get there one day — when work slows down, when we’ve saved a bit more, when life feels less busy.
But “someday” has a habit of never arriving. Weeks blur into months, months into years, and the idea of taking time off starts to feel indulgent, even irresponsible. We scroll through other people’s travel photos and whisper next year under our breath, as though the world will pause and wait for us to be ready.
The truth is, there’s no perfect time — there’s just time, and what we choose to do with it. The trips we take, the ones we postpone, and the ones we never quite make — all quietly shape the story we end up telling about our lives.
The Illusion of Time
We like to think there’s always more time — that the window to chase those big adventures will stay open indefinitely. We convince ourselves that once the next deadline passes, once the next pay rise hits, once the kids are older, once we’ve sorted everything else, we’ll finally take that trip.
But time, quietly and relentlessly, slips through the cracks of routine. Days off become postponed. Plans are pencilled in and erased. According to studies by travel associations, millions of annual leave days go unused every year — lost to busyness, guilt, or the belief that rest is something we still need to earn.
It’s easy to forget that our lives aren’t measured by the number of emails we send or meetings we sit through, but by the moments that pull us out of the ordinary. The night you watched stars scatter over the desert sky. The morning you wandered a city before it woke. The conversation you had with a stranger on a long, winding train.
Time is a currency we can’t save, only spend. And while we’re waiting for the “right” moment, life quietly keeps the meter running.
The Cost of Waiting
There’s a quiet price to postponing the things that make us feel alive. The cost isn’t just measured in missed flights or unbooked trips — it’s in the fading chance to experience the world at a certain moment in time.
Places evolve, landscapes change, people move on. That little café you once bookmarked might close before you ever taste its coffee. The reef you dreamed of diving could fade with the next bleaching season. Even the way you would have felt — standing before that view, younger, braver, more open — might never come again.
We tend to think the future will hold a better version of the present — more time, more money, more energy. But the truth is, something else will always come along to fill the space. There’s always another project, another bill, another reason to stay put.
Yet what if the real return on investment isn’t in the hours we log at work, but in the memories that outlast them? The story you’ll tell twenty years from now won’t be about the week you stayed late at the office — it’ll be about the one you finally took off.
Imperfect Timing, Perfect Moments
If we waited for everything to align — the right season, the perfect savings balance, the gap in our schedule — we’d hardly go anywhere at all. Life rarely grants us the luxury of perfect timing, yet the best adventures often begin precisely because we go anyway.
There’s a certain beauty in imperfection: the flight you booked on a whim, the trip you took despite the rain forecast, the hostel that turned out to be a little rough around the edges but full of good stories. Those moments, unpolished and unpredictable, often stay with us the longest.
Travel doesn’t have to be grand or meticulously planned to matter. A last-minute weekend away, a spontaneous hike, even a solo afternoon spent exploring a nearby town — all count. What makes them special isn’t how far you go, but how fully you show up when you do.
Sometimes, it’s in the unplanned detours — the ones that weren’t on the itinerary — where life quietly reminds us what we were looking for all along.
Redefining the Bucket List
Somewhere along the way, “bucket lists” became competitions — glossy compilations of far-flung places and once-in-a-lifetime experiences that look better on social media than they feel in real life. We tick them off like achievements, proof that we’ve lived well, when really, living well isn’t something that can be measured in stamps or selfies.
The truth is, a bucket list shouldn’t be a checklist — it should be a compass. A way to guide your curiosity, not confine it. It’s less about what’s on the list and more about why it’s there. Maybe it’s the place your grandparents once called home. Maybe it’s learning to surf, not because it’s trending, but because you’ve always wanted to feel that rush of standing on water.
Over time, the list should evolve — growing with you, not against you. The destinations might change, but the purpose stays the same: to keep you reaching beyond the edges of the everyday.
Because the most meaningful journeys aren’t about collecting experiences — they’re about allowing them to collect you.
“The funny thing about someday is that it always feels close — just around the corner, waiting for you to be ready. But readiness is a moving target. If you wait for it, you’ll wait forever.
The trips you take won’t always go to plan. Flights will be delayed, weather will turn, expectations will fall short — and yet, those moments are the proof that you went. You showed up for your own life. You stepped outside of routine and into something real.
So book the ticket. Request the leave. Say yes to the plan that feels slightly too spontaneous. Because the truth is, you’ll never regret the adventures you made time for — only the ones you didn’t.
The world won’t wait forever. And neither should you.”
