bucket list of things I’ve already checked off #2

For context, check out my earlier blog post, “bucket list of things I’ve already checked off.”

1. Learn the loving kindness meditation.
2. Meet a famous author, or several.
3. Meet an author you admire who isn’t famous.
4. Memorize Where the Wild Things Are because you’ve read it so many times with a three-year old.
5. Ugly cry in public.
6. Wake up to a cat walking across your back.
7. Sing holiday songs on tv with your sixth-grade class.
8. Drop paper copters in a stairwell with your colleagues near the end of the work day; have an eight-year with you to run down and pick up the copters.
9. Eat a marigold.
10. Speak your broken high school French to a Montreal native who knows almost no English.
11. Pay the bill for the car behind you at the drive through.
12. Stick up for someone being picked on.
13. Be a clown at a kid’s birthday party.
14. Make a cake that is way beyond your skill level. Like maybe an awesome castle with towers and a drawbridge.
15. Make mud pies. Maybe try a nibble.
16. Kiss the Blarney Stone.
17. Explore the Nicholson Bridge, the Archbald Pothole, Concrete City, Summit Pointe, the Steel Stacks, and every other random place you can find.
18. Swim in Walden Pond.
19. Get a deep tissue massage.
20. Tighten the screws on the chairs while staying with your dad while he recovers from back surgery. Remember when your mom chose the dining room set. Remember how much she loved it, what a big deal it was for her to choose furniture she loved.
21. Sing karaoke. Even if you’re kinda embarrassed for anyone to hear you sing.
22. Do a stratosphere ride in Vegas.
23. Sit with your two kids one evening after school and visit a website with fart sounds and laugh and laugh and laugh until you cry.
24. Play with a VR headset.
25. Do workouts that make your body sore and strong.
26. Decide you’ll train for a stein-holding contest.
27. Notice the gifts of the people who surround you. Tell them what you notice. Feel lucky to be surrounded by so many awesome people.
28. Have a pity party. Make fun of yourself for having a pity party. Close that pity party down, clean it up, move on.
29. Play Family Feud with strangers-turned-friends at Rising River Brewery. Get a kick out of affirming, “Good answer! Good answer!” while applauding your team.
30. Laugh at the funny parts of the dark days.
31. Cry at the sad or frustrating or lonely parts of the dark days.
32. Feel good about buying a new-ish car even if you’re fairly certain you were somehow supposed to dicker to drive the price down more than you did.
33. Cry with your friends in a coffee shop.
34. Give someone more chances if they’re trying. Cut them loose or otherwise hold them accountable if they’re not.
35. Stop talking when the other person has stopped listening.
36. Fly a kite.
37. Get obsessed with diamond painting.
38. Get a kick out of your adult children playing Star Wars Monopoly and talking about the game as if they are economic titans of the world.
39. Miss your exit because you got really into the music playing.
40. Miss your turn because you got really into a phone conversation during your drive.
41. Get super excited about delicious food every single time you experience it.

I started writing another blog post tonight, the eve of my 55th birthday. But something drew me back to this piece that I started ages ago. I added on to the list, and I think it’s really cool to see all the things I’ve done with my life already.

My reality is that I’m super angsty, regularly crying, feeling lonely. AND my reality is that I’m truly happy, living an incredibly good life, surrounded by people I care about who also care about me.

My bucket lists of things I’ve already checked off help me emphasize the good stuff, the things I’m grateful for. There’s more than enough! It’s okay that I’m not happy 100% of the time. I’m just a human being, going along, trying to figure things out, and somehow filling bucket-list-goals without even realizing that’s what I’m doing.

If you’ve never written a bucket list of things you’ve already checked off, I highly recommend it. Generating these lists makes me a bit more alive as I see my days with a fresh, hopeful, and grateful perspective.