I am making a bucket list.
It’s funny—in the last ten months the need to get some things done has consumed me like grass in the path of a California brush fire. Hardly a day goes by without the hamsters in my head staging a conference call about a project I have come to think of as “FUTURE PLANS.” Metaphorical Furry and Slurry have come up with quite a list so far, too, powered by endorphins, brown rice and the occasional Gigi’s Cupcake to set them really on a roll.
So, what’s on the list?
Quite a lot of varied proposals as Furry and Slurry aren’t in the
business of doing impractical editing. These items are different from my “TO DO
LIST” that includes non-negotiable things like:
Fix the screens and doors and kitchen floor in the new house.
Lower the BMI another 2% over the next year.
On this FUTURE PLANS list
my hamsters have compiled, there are items that are straight forward, provided I take the time to get the education and/or do the
work. These sorts of items have numbers because they can
be checked off once accomplished. They
are in no particular order; they are things that can be done when I have time
to do them. These are things like:
- Learn to make decent Pho.
- Plant and keep a nice flower garden.
Other list items are predictably travel related and annotated in my head with caps, stars and swirls to illustrate the potential for magical adventures the idea of them bring:
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
TRAVEL TO L.A./COLORADO/GRAND CANYON/DUBLIN/B.C./LONDON/INDIA/JAPAN
SEE FRIENDS, DO THINGS, TAKE THE BOY.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Others FUTURE PLANS
items wind like the roads that would take me there and are not written with
such emphasis as they seem further away, less likely, but are still too vital
to completely remove from the list. This
sometimes makes them hard to read.
W k U a K B s C m
a e
p t 2 a
e a p
Others on the ambition/career portion of the list fade in and out of focus, some days appearing fuzzier and far away while other line items appear crystal clear and just within reach.
Zumba Certification
Audition for a show in an open call.
ACE certification
Degree in
Nutrition
Make the BIG IDEA happen
Finish the
book.
Some FUTURE PLANS start with parenthesis as if they are half
an idea. They end with question marks
and remain all in italics as if they are
shy about even being considered as a potential and realistic goal.
(go to burning man?)
And others...others can’t be written down for long. They appear then disappear like the Cheshire cat,
leaving only the residual of a lines-on-imaginary-paper smile to show they once were there. I know about them but they refuse to take a
place of permanence on the list. They
are *not* *quite* *there* yet.
This FUTURE PLANS list?
It’s long. LONG. The ones written above are some of the bigger
line items, but there are many more for as anyone who has ever met me can
testify, my head is a busy place.
The issue for the most part of doing all these things (outside
financial resources and time and I do not count either because if you want to
do something, really want to do it, these things can be made to appear) is
motivation.
I have trouble with motivation. Let me correct that: I have no trouble with motivation that
arrives on the surge of an initial impulse.
My initial impulses are great.
Where I bog down is on the long haul between Make-It-Happen-Topeka and Goal-Accomplished-Fort
Worth. On the goal-reaching stretches
that go on for miles, where there is no excitement and only the routine and regimen
of moving towards something, my momentum hitches and sputters, When the road gets rough or the way isn’t
clear and I’m going to have to blaze a trail or make a new way, it is in these stretches my impulse loaded
engine slows to a stop and I find myself beside the side of the road of My Best Intentions with
a buck in my pocket, out of gas and low on spirit.
When this cycle reaches this conclusion, I
follow the ritual of blown-out impulses and put the demoted goal in a pretty,
decorative mental strong box for safe keeping; a sort of hope chest for ideas
that just didn’t happen. I do take the
box out now and again. Sometimes, upon
re-examining the ideas, some impulses spark back to life, but if things bog
down, then back to the box the ideas go, either in a rush or more commonly, with
reluctance.
The logical part of me (there is one, actually) condenses
the phenomenon in the following SQL-esque manner:
If IMPULSE =OVER
then
MOTIVATION = GONE.
(End)
The sole exception of this pattern in my life is current
experiment under way to continue to live a lifestyle free from Type II
Diabetes. . This time, I actually was successful at
accomplishing a goal. Of course, then I
found out the goal was actually a journey which continues onwards and will for
the rest of my life, but that’s fine.
I’m here, I don’t have medication, WINNING.
It helps to keep the engine chugging remembering diabetes
doesn’t take time off because I need to carbo-load. Hell, this disease is so deep in my genetic code, even
with everything I'm doing now, I still might not be able to avoid it. Still, that doesn’t mean squat—well, actually it means a bunch of squats but not in the metaphorical sense of the term.
When the motivation lags, some meditation on adding needles and insulin and
medication to the daily routines usually turns it around. When truth-based scare tactics don’t work, the
thought of the Boy going through life with a healthy-as-possible mother and one
less thing for him to worry about usually does the trick.
And now there is this list, filled with asterisks and italics
and bold fonts to highlight ideas.
Things to do. Things to
accomplish which ties back to a night in
a bar in Chicago in 1994. I had met
this fantastic artist, Paula Killen. She
was doing her one woman show at the Goodman and my boyfriend at the time was
the sound designer so we ended up hanging out with her during the run. She
was and is a brilliant writer and monologist; one of those beings that burns so
bright energy radiates off of her in waves.
In Chicago winter, it was good to hang out near Paula because that fire
she had in her belly to create just kept you warm inside. It inspired you.
Anyway, we were out at a bar—maybe the Map Room, definitely
not Marie’s Rip Tide that night--and I said something in a rather wistful, little-dog-scratching-at-the-door-to-be-let-in manner along the lines like I
had always wanted to do new plays or develop a one woman show. Her response was straight and to the point. “Well, why don’t you just do it?” No bells. No whistles.
Just do it.
Just do it?
Not wait for permission or to receive validation? It rolled off
the tongue so easily. So you mean, you just do the work, get it done, make it
happen? My 28 year old self twitched at
the idea. You mean, I don’t have to
wait until all the circumstances were
perfect? Just...do it? Like the Nike ad?
Yes. Just do it. Make a decision. Go with it. Get it done. It's that simple.
And now, twenty years later, with this list swirling up from
my mind’s eye like smoke in a magic mirror on a regular basis, the same statement faces me. Why don’t I just do
it? Why don't we all, no matter what the "it" is?
I have thought and thought about it and finally determined there are no compelling reasons not to do everything on the FUTURE PLANS list. Everything.
One at a time until my time runs out, whenever that is. Maybe I get to one of them. Maybe I get to all of them and start a new
list. Some will be harder than
others. There’s no reason not to
try.
There are lots of reasons we don’t do things. Lots and lots. We tell ourselves we can’t because it’s not
easy or convenient or affordable or practical. We tell ourselves we can’t because of ties
that bind. I agree there is a level of
responsibility to it all, especially as a parent. For me, the lights have to stay on, food must
remain on the table and the relative safety and stability of all beings within
my care must be ensured, with the health and well being of the Boy first and
foremost. The TO DO list must be maintained.
However, it makes sense now that the FUTURE
PLANS doesn’t have anything to do with the TO DO list. For many years they were tied--it was all about the ultimate goal instead of the journey to get there, the enjoyment of the now. Taking it a step at a time—setting a goal and
working for it—having a compelling need to accomplish it even if it’s just “this
is something I want” is reason enough to get through the Topeka to Fort
Worth haul.
So, yeah. I have a bucket list. I have FUTURE PLANS. What I'm learning is to take it one step at a
time and keep going until you get to the end which sometimes turns out not to be the end but the beginning. Then maybe you have something. Or better yet, maybe you'll just have the journey and most of the time, that's where the best stuff happens.
That's enough to keep one motivated. That's enough to make me say, "See you in Fort Worth."
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