One of life’s strangest mysteries occurs when an offhand action or remark unexpectedly triggers an unforeseen change in the course of one’s existence.
It’s happened to me a few times before: Once, I absentmindedly signed up for a sweepstakes when buying a pair of shoes at a suburban Virginia PacSun in the year 2000 and ended up on an all-expenses-paid, weeklong trip to Hawaii. (Yes, that really happened and no, I don’t still have the shoes.) Another time in 2007, on a punk message board I was active on, I asked about downloading movies and ended up file-sharing with a stranger, who I eventually married.
It happened again in October 2019. On a whim, I took to Twitter (as one does) and blurted out a few beer-related bucket-list goals that read, in no particular order:
Attend the Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Festival
Be a beer judge at the Great American Beer Festival
Try Samuel Adams’ Utopias
Drink Sierra Nevada Pale Ale at the source
Within hours, two surprising things had happened. The first was a number of people created their own beer bucket lists: mixes of where they wanted to travel, certain beers they’d like to try, specific events to attend, and so on. The second surprise came when I received both an invitation to the Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Festival (which, sadly, was canceled by COVID-19) and an offer to give me my very own Utopias bottle from Sam Adams. Apparently, putting things out into the universe really can yield results!
Eventually, I did drink Sierra Nevada Pale Ale at the source, albeit at the brewery’s second location in North Carolina. (I have yet to make it to Chico, but hey, it still counts.) As for judging at GABF, who knows. I applied, I was accepted, but between the multi-year waiting list and the pandemic hitting long-term pause on large-scale public gatherings, I’m holding that one pretty lightly.
None of my original bucket-list items were particularly difficult to achieve. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t worth taking the steps to pursue. Speaking them into reality didn’t make them come true on their own. Taking actions like prioritizing travel to the places I wanted to visit, or filling out the beer judge application—those are the small but necessary factors that ultimately bring goals to fruition. Magical thinking only goes so far.
Overall, I don’t believe in, or deeply subscribe to, resolutions. This has proved especially prudent over the past two years—the utter futility of trying to predict what I’m going to do in an unpredictable landscape seems like a gigantic waste of time, and an almost inevitable source of failure or disappointment. Still, I do like to set goals for myself, untethered by time and years.
Today, my goals look a bit more large-scale: things like “finish my damn book one day,” “travel to the U.K. to visit traditional pubs and drink as much cider and Ale as I can,” and maybe even “take a fucking vacation.” I’m much less interested in chasing hype beers or ticking off breweries as I am simply making sure I, and the people I love, are safe, healthy, and happy (in that order). So far, I’ve had moderate success: Although everyone in my immediate family caught COVID-19, including my soon-to-be-vaccinated preschooler (I’m counting down the days until his fifth birthday), we’re all still standing and breathing a little easier every day. Happiness comes and goes, but we’re alive. We’re together. Keeping that streak going in 2022 seems like a damn fine goal to me.
