Okay, okay. I owe everyone, including myself, a huge apology. I publicly committed to blogging twice a week in 2011 and have not posted since early February. That's pretty pathetic, all things considered. I did have some reasonable excuses in February, including a crazy work schedule and then my long-awaited trip to Florida to celebrate my 40th, but March I can really only chalk up to either laziness or indifference. Since I profess to actually care about writing and want to improve my skills, both of those characteristics are really uncool. I hate finding these types of things out about myself! I now need to really step up my game in the coming weeks to get back on track, starting with this post.
A friend posted on Facebook today about his "bucket list". Interestingly, he asked if "anyone has one or recently achieved a similar goal?" It appeared, at least from the context that was available to me, that he envisioned a bucket list of things he wanted to achieve in his life (e.g., he ran a 50K last weekend). My bucket list is entirely different in purpose, focused more on experiences than on limit-testing. Certainly the list contains things that I hope to do in the active sense, but the activities are not about pushing myself to extremes. Rather, they are about experiencing the wonder and awe that this world has to offer. My list is more about the "wow!" and less about the "whew!".
Though actually calling it a list is probably a bit inaccurate, in that I've never written it down. That's probably the first flaw in my plan - one of many, I'm sure. So here is a partial bucket list, created on the fly today.
1. See a space shuttle launch in person (Check - May 2010 and February 2011)
2. Experience an Olympics (Hopefully check - July 2012!)
3. Visit every continent at least once (need to get cracking on this one - only 2 so far!)
4. Visit King Tut's tomb and other awesome artifacts in Egypt
5. Write a novel.
You'll notice that most of my bucket list involves travel - I absolutely adore going to other countries to experience their history and culture. My husband and I have a vacation priority list that includes Australia, Russia, and Ireland, among many other countries. But that pesky number 5 starts to creep out of the wow category and into the whew category, doesn't it? It is a daunting task that will test my personal limits, but more in the intellectual than the physical sense.
I have been reading a bit about the craft of writing in an effort to propel my novel-writing efforts forward, but that will be for another day. I have to stretch this out to catch up on my posts, don't I? : )
So I ask you, what is on your bucket list?
