The Bucket List

I suppose people start blogs for all sorts of reasons - to keep family and friends apprised of their day to day lives, to journal their way through experiments, or maybe simply as an outlet for themselves. For me, this started with the list...my bucket list to be exact.

As I begin this, I am in a transition phase in my life. As a matter of fact, this week marks the nine month anniversary of the most important, and selfish, decision I have ever made - to live for myself. This year I ended my marriage of seven years, went back to school and started a new career, and, quite by accident, met and fell in love with the most amazing individual I've ever met, and subsequently, married again. I also happened to find out I have a condition that seriously limits my life expectancy. Enter the bucket list.

With the doctor's long face fresh in my mind, I took a good long look at my life and realized that all those "things I'll do someday" might not ever get their chance if I kept them on the back burner. While I've never actually seen the Hollywood version (another item to add to my list perhaps?), I knew the gist and slowly began making a hard copy of all those things I'd always wanted to try or learn or see, figuring if it was in black and white there was a better chance those things might actually occur. It's like when I tell my clients to keep a food diary, because your mind will forget those twinkies when you're thinking back over your day, but you can't ignore those extra 400 calories when they're staring you in the face in print. Instead of vague ideas in the back of my mind, I wanted something concrete, something that would remind me every day that there is some new adventure to strive towards.

Somewhere between places to travel and new skills to learn, starting a blog popped up in my mind. Not a totally foreign idea as I've dabbled in blogland before, but the motivation behind this particular idea was stronger than simply chronicling my days. I realized I wanted an account. The same way I wanted a list in black and white, some physical presence I could mark off as I went along, I wanted a place where the details were recorded, where I could look back on the days I start to feel overwhelmed by that impending doom feeling and see the proof that I am still striving toward new goals, still making progress, still living.

And so it starts. You can see the list in its entirety by clicking the tab above. Some of the items are bucket list 101 average, some are very personal to me, a few come in conjunction with my new husband's, and several appear completely impossible. But that's what makes life worth living, n'est-ce pas? Striving towards the next, the new, the utterly insane and downright impossible - I intend to do them all, and leave the record here.