About two months ago, my unhappiness finally hit its tipping point. A couple of dramatic outbursts, ruined relationships and days where I couldn’t get out of bed later, I decided it was time to pick myself back up. I grabbed my insurance card, went to the Internet and made an appointment with the first therapist that would take me.

Uh oh, you’re thinking. She’s going to talk about the T-word. Sarah’s crazy. Go ahead, get the stigmas out of the way now, and then continue reading…if you want.

This isn’t my first rendezvous with therapy, and I’m sure it won’t be my last. In middle school I saw a therapist because I had severe anxiety over staying home alone. I didn’t start babysitting until I was almost 15; the fear was so debilitating in middle school my mother couldn’t run around the corner for five minutes to pick up a carton of milk. Then, during my freshman year of high school, I was back on the plush couch for a mild case of depression and anxiety that came with adjusting to high school.

And now I’m back on a couch — after an especially awful April 1 weekend — trying to make sense of what’s happened, nearly one year since my “trip of a lifetime.”

Looking back even just six months, a lot has happened: I stopped traveling, moved back home and started working full-time again at a dead-end job. My family dynamic drastically changed, relationships started and ended, I was rejected from graduate school and friends are moving away or preparing for weddings. Somewhere, through all of these external factors, I got lost in the shuffle and really bummed out. I stopped seeing the positive in just about everything, even the travel high I had come off of not long ago and the prospect of saving for more travel.

I felt like a tourist on a really shitty vacation where all it does is rain, your hotel reservation gets lost and your car breaks down on the way to the airport. Except, this shitty vacation was my life. Death Cab for Cutie’s newest single, “You are a Tourist” seemed to sum up my feelings quite nicely:

“You feel just like a tourist in the city you were born, then it’s time to go

And you find your destination with so many different places to call home.”

I miss traveling, but more than that, I miss what it did for my outlook. Everything was new and exciting while on the road and little seemed to get me down, not even dodging bullets in Bangkok or a lost ATM card. The world was engaging me and I was completely immersed in it. So many places DID feel like home and I was happy.

I stopped writing about travel because I had started to feel guilty about my time away, feeling as though my travels brought upon these misfortunes. If I had never hopped that one-way flight to Bangkok on Jan. 7, 2010, how different would things be today? Therapy has helped me find the answer: not much. Friends would still be engaged, my family issues would still have come to a head and my relationships would still be teetering on the edge of success or failure. My trip through Southeast Asia and the Middle East was great. It was more than great; it was an opportunity that many will never take and it makes me unique. It helped me to define the person I can and want to be.

My disposition is on a slow mend and I’m back to restructuring the type of life I want to live. With a little bit more time, I’ll be back to finding my destination and all those places to call home.

— Rory MacLean, author of my favorite book from my travels, “Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India”

— Cesare Pavese

The completion of the list just so happens to coincide with a pretty big milestone for She’s in Love with the World. This blog entry is my 50^th post, something I was never quite sure I’d actually make it to. It’s been an amazing ride through Southeast Asia and the blog world and I finally feel like SILWTW is coming into its own, regardless of who does or does not read it. To celebrate, I’ve decided that this post is dedicated to the first 50 entries on my bucket list. I’m working on coining my own unique name for this list as I HATE the term bucket list — probably why I never made one — so suggestions are welcome.

1. Write a book.
   
   

   Completing No. 47 in Chiang Mai.

2. Live abroad for one year.
3. Learn three foreign languages fluently (Spanish, French, Hebrew).
4. Learn to play the guitar.
5. Start a blog. (Completed November 2009)
6. Sustain myself on a freelance career.
7. Visit all 50 states.
8. Visit all seven continents. (Completed North America, Europe, Asia, Africa as of June 2010)
9. Go to graduate school.
10. Live on the West Coast of the United States.
11. Visit every country in the world.
12. Work for a global nonprofit or NGO.
13. Attend the following multi-day music festivals: Glastonbury, Coachella, SXSW and Reading/Leeds.
14. Make a speech in front of at least 500 people (aka – get over stage fright).
15. Participate in a long-term volunteer program.
16. Retrace the footsteps of the Beatles from Liverpool to Hamburg to London to India in one seriously hippie trip.
17. Work on a political campaign.
18. Take a summer road trip to every baseball stadium in the country.
19. Own and learn how to take photos on an SLR camera.
20. Get published in “The New Yorker.”
21. Travel for more than three months straight. (Completed January-April 2010)
22. Get a tattoo.
23. Donate at least $1,000 to a cause I care for and believe in.
24. Learn to surf.
25. Adopt a child.
26. Teach English in a foreign country.
27. Host a dinner party for at least 10 guests.
28. Gamble in Las Vegas.
29. Lobby to Congress.
30. Interview a celebrity for a magazine or newspaper article. (Completed May 2006, June 2007, September 2008, December 2008, January 2009, August 2010)
31. Live in a culture opposite from my own. (Completed March-June 2010 in Bangkok, Thailand)
32. Visit Machu Picchu.
33. Dance at Carnivale.
34. Visit Angkor Wat. (Completed March 2010)
35. Attend the Holi Festival in India.
36. Take ballroom dance lessons. (Completed February-May 2008)
37. Win a contest.
    
    

    In June I can cross No. 31 and 49 off the list!

38. Write a song.
39. Be a UN volunteer.
40. Spend Saint Patrick’s Day in Dublin.
41. Have a beer (or 10) at Oktoberfest.
42. Make my lifestyle as eco-friendly as possible.
43. Take an international trip with Mom.
44. Take an international trip with Dad.
45. Take an international trip with my sister, Diana. (Completed June 2009)
46. Take an international trip with my brother, Michael.
47. Ride an elephant. (Completed February 2010)
48. Campaign/influence public policy on two of the following: education, equal rights, health care, environment, HIV/AIDS outreach or election reform.
49. Live and work a location independent lifestyle for two months. (Completed March-June 2010)
50. Be on the other side of the interview: make the news instead of writing it.

Well, there you have it: the first 50 entries (extremely loosely organized) into some form of a bucket list. I contemplated releasing the second half in this post too, but realized a few things. Firstly, the post would’ve been too long and secondly, I was really, really tired of trying to put my notes into some sort of coherent, logical order. I’ll release the second half some time between now and my 100^th post, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, have you ever made a bucket list? What’s on it? Do any of our “to do’s” match? Leave your entries in the comments section.

— Song of the Open Road, Walt Whitman

— Mark Twain

For some real inspiration, I’ve decided to extend my donations from this post. For every comment on the post, I will donate an additional $1 to the Red Cross to help earthquake efforts in both Haiti and Chile through April 20.

I’m huge on leaving notes behind and finding them in my books (I’m a huge fan of Frank Warren’s PostSecret) and to my delight, upon opening the plastic wrap to surf through the pages, I found this inscription:

October 2009

FTB,

This book will change your life — Chapter 4 on Liberation is for you my friend. Travel the world, take amazing photos and join in the new rich! Welcome aboard. It’s a great ride.

-Tom

Give this song a listen and stay tuned for a post about my favorite travel songs that have and continue to inspire me, coming as soon as I can narrow my list of hundreds down to about 10.

For some real inspiration, head back a post to help me help Haiti rebuild after the devastating earthquake.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson