The Bucket List

Never one for lectures, I always hated sitting in class. My mind would always tend to wander.

On one cold evening in 2011, I was in a marketing class where our teacher was reviewing material for the upcoming midterm. Dreading the midterm, I started to daydream about all of the places that I’d rather be than in class getting ready to take the midterm.

I’ve never been good at remembering things (which explains my continuous fear of tests–I still have nightmares about some of them from my undergraduate to this day), and not wanting to forget the places that I was dreaming up, I jumped on Google Maps and created a map that I called “Joe’s Adventure and Bucket List Map.” This map quickly grew to contain hundreds of locations that I hope to visit someday. I maintained the list for years, and the full, current map is available above.

That same semester, I would leave my job for another which allowed me to develop relationships with Fortune 500 companies. In this job, one of the companies that I started talking to was Southwest Airlines. A few years later, Southwest invited me to become a part of their team.

I jumped at the opportunity and never looked back. I began my new career and loved it. After I became an employee, I also began to enjoy all of the benefits of non-revenue travel. In my first year, I took 25 trips around the United States, exploring many destinations that I had previously been to, as well as some new ones.

Multiple people that I’ve worked with have approached me and asked me to start blogging about my experiences. This was almost identical to how my last major website attempt (www.dineatjoes.com) began. Thus, Joe’s Bucket List was born.

However–this won’t stop at just the Google Map, though I do hope (someday) to get to all of those places. I hope to ultimately make “Joe’s Bucket List” a blog covering multiple topics that I find interesting–however, all topics covered here are intended to tie back to traveling. Eventually, I hope to produce videos and a YouTube channel to go along with this blog as well.

Until next time, travelers–be safe and thoughtful in your travels!

Please note: Any opinions reflected on this blog reflect those of myself, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Southwest Airlines.