'Go Mighty' or You Might Not Go at All Every school vacation reminds me that that which you do not set out to do, rarely gets done, while that which makes itself readily available to you expands to fit all the time you have and then some. Which is a really fancy way of saying that if we don't choose something to do and set out to do it, what we're invariably left with at the end of winter break, spring break or even summer vacation are memories of too much television and the day someone discovered that with multiple iDevices, everyone could somehow play Minecraft all together. This isn't in itself a bad thing - it's good to spend some time just roaming the house aimlessly and squabbling with your siblings. But there are moments when I envision all of our time together as a family - all of the years living together under one roof - just getting piddled away in a pile of Disney sitcoms and pizza boxes, and that's when I start thinking about things like life lists, goals and master plans - for my family, and for myself. Because I have become, in the rush of life, someone who spends most of her time responding to things instead of setting goals and moving toward them, and I don't like the result. It was in this mood that I stumbled across Go Mighty, the Web site, group blog and brainchild of Maggie Mason, aided and abetted by Laura Mayes, Sarah Bryden-Brown, and Amber Doty. Go Mighty "is for people who want to connect and collaborate to do something good for themselves and others" and its focus is on the life list: goals (Get a passport. Drive a race car. Start a Web site preserving the history of Appalachian churches) set, achieved and adjusted over time. I e-mailed Maggie Mason to ask her to describe the difference between a life list and a "bucket list," and she responded with passion: The term bucket list bums me out. When I first started telling people that I was dogsledding, or taking tap lessons, or traveling because I was crossing things off a list? They all looked at me like I was dying. I'm not saying life should be a race, but there is this idea that we have to wait until we're diagnosed with something terrifying to start doing the things we've always wanted to do. And the term "bucket list" reinforces that idiocy. A Life List is less morbid and way more flexible than a bucket list. I want a place to store my ideas, not a clock ticking over my head. So with Go Mighty we've tried to emphasize the stories you collect along the way, instead of pushing people to check something off. If you're constantly looking to cross the next thing off, it can make you frenetic. You become immune to contentment. It's smart to pursue happiness - I mean, go for it - but stop and savor it when you catch it. Those are two messages I need to hear, often: Figure out what you want to do, and go after it - then stop to savor it when you get it. And they're messages that apply to me as a parent as well - in that same e-mail, Maggie reminded me that "living your life list teaches kids that there's a way to shape their world, even in small ways, instead of always reacting to their environment." Raising children that work to shape their world (while doing some shaping of my own) is a very appealing prospect - and that's why Go Mighty is the first site I'm officially adding to Motherlode's soon-to-be-launched blogroll. Go Mighty had a head start - finding it, and the many people there blogging their lists and goals, was one of the things that pushed me to start the blogroll project in the first place. I know - as you'll see if you click through, it's not really a classic blog, but it charmed me. As much as I'm looking for the kinds of blogs I loved when I first started reading them, I've got an eye out for the future of blogging as well, and this community-driven collaborative effort is just that. What else is happening with the blogroll? I'm overwhelmed by the interest - but I'm reading, hard, and looking for relatively few must-reads and a larger number of blogs to collect for true blog-lovers. Technically, I'm not sure what that will look like. But for now, I'll introduce a blog or two a week for the next few weeks (an amorphous number because I'm not certain how long the blogroll will be) and the next blogs I have my eye on are one-person shops that many of you love. In a way, the blogroll is a little Motherlode "Go Mighty." It's something I've been meaning to do ever since I shut the old blogroll down, and it's something I want to do right - not by lining up the obvious subjects, but by really reading and listening and looking for the voices that give something to us all. And it's a collaborative effort - I had some ideas, but you readers are really going to make the end result possible. And if you're looking for some blogs for your own blogroll, check out the comments here or scroll down my Twitter feed. Go forth and read and comment, and if you find something you love, report back. I may be overwhelmed, but I'm also delighted - and listening, and reading, mighty hard.