Reinventing the bucket list
Ageneration ago, people’s 20s were a time to get on a career track, get married and start having kids.
Not so for millennials. And maybe that’s a good thing. “I think our parents were forced into a certain life, and our generation is freed from that pressure and is charting our own path,” says Marina Shifrin, the 30-year-old author of the collection “30 Before 30: How I Made a Mess of My 20s, and You Can Too.” Even if it’s an imperfect path. “Your 20s are great because you can make messes,” Shifrin explains. “You can drink too much. You can quit in grand ways. And then you can rebuild your life.”
Inspired by a list she made at age 23 of adventures she wanted to have before 30, Shifrin set out to “force myself to have big experiences” for a decade. “There’s an idea that [it’s] being self-indulgent and ‘basic’ to make a list of life goals,” she says. “People say millennials are all about cultivating lifestyles, but you shouldn’t care about that. Just go after it.
“Which,” she adds with a laugh, “sounds like an Instagram post for Nike.”
Some of the items on her list included living in a foreign country, donating her hair, falling in love and quitting her job — which she did via a video that quickly went viral in 2013 when she posted it on YouTube. Set to Kanye West’s song “Gone,” it showed Shifrin dancing as subtitles announced her resignation from a Taiwanese animation firm. The clip eventually racked up more than 19 million views. That proved to be something of a mixed blessing.
“There were two camps of people” who had something to say about her resignation, Shifrin recalls. “Those who were super supportive and living vicariously through it — everyone has had a bad job and fantasized about quitting — and the another camp who talked about what an ungrateful millennial I was.”
Quitting meant Shifrin had more time to pursue the items on her to-do quest. That list was inspired by the blog “100 Interviews,” where aspiring journalist Gaby Dunn interviewed 100 subjects — from abortion doctors to Buddhist priest — and told their stories online.
“I was so impressed with Gaby’s commitment to getting out of her comfort zone . . . that I wanted to do the same,” says Shifrin.
She was able to tick off nine of the items in the first two years after drawing up her list, but finished the majority of them after quitting her job at 25.
One of her favorite items was visiting Russia, where her parents were born, and meeting family there.
“Experiencing Russia firsthand brought the edges of my blurry past into focus,” Shifrin says. “Being able to meet my estranged family members and see how their features aligned with mine was incredibly bizarre and heartwarming.”
The only list item she regrets including is “become a muse.” The closest she came was inspiring some song lyrics by a former highschool boyfriend who occasionally crashed on her couch when he was visiting New York. The lyrics were hardly romantic: They were about how he didn’t want any real commitment. Shifrin says it disabused her of any notion that being a muse was satisfying and, “I learned not to put that power into other people’s hands . . . But what makes it great is I learned from it.”
By the time she turned 30 in January, she hadn’t accomplish just two items: appearing on ”The Tonight Show” and buying property in New York.
Shifrin admits that property prices in New York mean “I don’t foresee it happening in my 30s either” — but adds that failing in the goal taught her “you shouldn’t let a city define you.” After quitting her job, she moved to Los Angeles to work on Comedy Central shows including “@midnight” and “Problematic with Moshe Kasher,” first as a digital producer, then as a writer’s assistant and now as a writer for an upcoming pilot.
Now, Shifrin is finalizing items for her 40before-40 list. Items so far include killing and butchering her own dinner and painting a mural.
She wouldn’t advise anyone else to quit a job or to make a video of themselves doing so — even if, in her case, it led to TV offers and a book deal — but does say that everyone should find a job they enjoy.
Shifrin also urges people in their 20s to “be selfish. If you focus on what you want and who you want to be, you’ll be a better contributor to society as you enter your 30s.”
You might even find you have enough material to make a delightful book.