Bucket list

The to do list creates slavery

I've been thinking about bucket lists -- wondering if I should have one, and considering the wavery line that exists between to do and bucket lists.  I met someone last spring who, when the topic came up, said, "Oh, I don't have a bucket list.  If I want to do something, I just do it."  I won't go into how annoying that was, because I'm trying to be positive.  Yes I am! [But really, who says that?  It's like saying, "Yeah, I never have problems -- when something arises, I just address it!"]

The taxonomy is obvious in some cases.  "Tidy the kitchen counter"  -- definitely to do list.  But what about, "clean out the freezer that has weird layer of frozen crumbs and goo of unknown origin that's been stuck there for a long time and I never want to clean it because it's so very very cold cold, not to mention out of sight?"   Should that be a bucket list item?  Because it's for sure way out of reach and may or may not happen in this lifetime.  But should the BL be fun?  The to do list makes us slaves, while the bucket list lets us dream?  Anyway, here goes.

1.  Spend a few months on an island in Greece eating olives and riding a one-speed bike to the market every day for seafood and retsina.  (The olives I'll just pick from a tree in the yard.)

The bucket list creates fantasy

2.  Press shin to occiput and hold.  (That was an actual instruction at a celebrity yoga class I took last week. And yes, that's a thing, celebrity yoga.) My tibia and occiput will never meet in the body that I wear around now, but maybe in some other lifetime.  (But I'm getting closer to being able to answer the phone that is my foot! Luckily my foot has no reason to call just yet, but one day, foot will call, and ear will be all, "Hello?  May I help you?")  But I put the S to O thing on this list to remember to imagine that things could be different, and there's not too much downside in trying.

3.  Finish writing my book, and try to make it good.  As Charles Frazier, who wrote Cold Mountain,  said, "even if it's just a book that sits in a drawer, I want it to be a good book in a drawer."  His, of course, turned out to be a smashing success, not a dust-gatherer in a drawer.  But still. I want a good book for my box in the basement.  If I had a basement.

4.  Learn to be a better communicator.  Not that my communication is particularly bad, but there are ways to listen and to speak, I believe, that bring out the best in everyone, and I'd like to get better at that.

 5.  Age gracefully. By that, I mean that when I become a little more crazy than I already am, it will be in a quiet, unobtrusive, victimless way, and I won't be mean-spirited or needy.

6.  Land on a comet.  Oh wait.  I don't want to climb in a tiny metal unit and go shooting out into space.  I like the earth, it is my home.  I have no interest in going anywhere at all.  Oh, except greece.  (That's on earth, no?)

7.  Write an entry for Atlas Obscura.  I don't do it, though, because I want to create a local entry, but what's to see?  Do I want to be responsible for encouraging disappinted tourists to drive through traffic to look at our big rock?  Does that really on my bucket list?

8.  Love and be loved.

9.  Heat my home with flower pots and rabbits.  (CHECK.)

10.  Create a little podcast where I interview interesting people.  And let's face it, we're all interesting.

11.  Work on a better bucket list.