“What’s on your travel bucket list?”

If you’ve expressed your desire or love of travel and haven’t heard some version of this phrase, I consider you lucky. I’ve heard this more times than I can count, usually followed by a “you have to have a list of must sees!”.

But I don’t.

When I tell people that if it’s on a map I want to go – I mean it. Are there places that I might get to before others? Of course. Is that because of some random ranking system on a list? Not even a little. People ask me: “Do you want to go to x?” and my answer will almost always be “Yes!” even if I’ve been there before, sometimes especially if I’ve been there before.

I’ll be one of the first to admit that I’ve planned trips based on media – for me that’s typically a book or a movie that’s set in a specific place. I get caught up in that world and decide I want to see whatever it is that inspired this piece of art that wrapped me up so completely. It’s this feeling that took me to a small town in Wisconsin 11 years ago on the edge of Lake Superior (after flying into the nearby Canadian city of Thunder Bay since google told me it was the nearest airport and having a passport and the travel bug meant that I saw nothing unusual with that decision…apparently border officers don’t share that same thought process – a story for another time and one that’s not as dramatic as I’m making it sound like here).

But I don’t have a travel bucket list – nor do I want one. I’m more likely to take the bucket and throw it into the air and see what lands on my hand. Or maybe just throw a dart at a map and see where it sticks. At least with those I don’t have to attempt to rank places.

If you have a bucket list – great! Good for you! Rank them (or not) and take the trips in whatever order works for you. When someone asks you the question, take out your list, dust it off, and amaze them with all the places you plan to go.

But if you’re like me and get a little more frustrated every time someone asks you that question, know you’re not alone. Come up with some standard responses, and parrot them to anyone who asks. The ones who actually care will ask you questions and the conversation will flow naturally once they get over the shock. The rest, the ones that are just filling the silence with small talk, will redirect the conversation no matter what your answer is – so don’t waste your energy on trying to alivate the awkward – embrace it instead.

Some of my standard responses – the response given depends on the person asking:

• If it’s on a map, it’s on my list.
• I threw the bucket away a while ago – it got too full.
• Why write a list when I can just look at a map? It’s less effort and has the same information.
• If I had a list, it would have so many sub-lists and tabs I’d crash the program (my brain is the program…)

Honestly – it’s not too different than my thoughts on a To Be Read list, the only difference is everyone always has a new book for me to add to my TBR list, but not everyone will try to convince me to travel to a new place. And spoiler alert – if I tell you I’ll add a book to my TBR list, I’m lying about 95% of the time, that book just went to the graveyard of forgotten recommendations in my mind. My ‘travel list’ is similar, though the 5% that makes it tends to be because it’s a local place in wherever I am or someone I met lives there. However, for both travel and books, if you get passionate about it and can sell me on it, it will make an impression and I’m much more likely to read it or visit the place. (except museums – sorry not sorry, it takes a lot for me to go to one of those, especially if they aren’t free/cheap, or on a subject I’m interested in).

So Travel Bucket List – do you have one?