Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Your list

One of the guys I met at the weekend commented at breakfast one day that he'd done everything on his list* except skydiving (but that the desire to go skydiving disappeared somewhere along the way anyway).  It's so fantastic that there are people in life who are able to say that and yet are also still enjoying their lives immensely and continuing to do a myriad of things.

A short time after that conversation the subject of lists came up again and he asked me what was on mine.  And I had no idea what to say.  Now, part of that was because although I first met him twenty years ago, I don't actually know him very well and the first couple of things that popped into my mind were fairly personal (fall in love again, have way more sex than I have had to date, that kind of thing).  On the other hand, I am fairly open about talking about what I want with all kinds of people and it is actually often easier to explain some of the things I'd like to do to people I don't know well because there are no preconceptions and no assumptions about things in my life that might hold me back.  After first shrugging my shoulders in an embarrassingly juvenile way, I could only come up with a somewhat half-hearted, "Well, I would like to learn to dance."  Which is possibly the one thing that I definitely have had on my list for many, many years, as I remember writing it during a time management workshop that I did during my first job and already then had the feeling that I'd been wanting to do it for years (that exercise, by the way, was interesting...at the beginning of the workshop we all had to write down what the thing was that we would do if we only had the time and then at the end of the workshop the trainer read out all the replies to the sounds of some kind of mellow music playing in the background).

I'm sure I've written before that I don't deal well with making lots of goals and prefer just vague outlines, which goes some way to explaining why I didn't have a list to recite off the top of my head.  On the other hand, how great would it be to get to the later stages of your life and be able to say that you'd done everything you set out to do.  If you haven't really known what you were setting out to do, that's a bit difficult.  I'm sure there must be a happy medium between not restricting yourself too much to a black and white list and having ideas that are so wishy-washy you have difficulty articulating them.

I'd be curious to know what others do in relation to this.  Do you have a concrete list of things you want to do during your life?  Do you re-visit it often to add or subtract things?  Are you happier to just drift where your life takes you?


*He did say just 'list' and not 'bucket list' and since I find the term bucket list intensely annoying for some reason (I did quite like the film though), I'm going to stick to what was actually said.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

No I don't actually have a list. There is something to be said for actually having a list though. See the thing is when someone formulates the list they may actually make a plan. If you make a plan and actually set goals and then try to break those goals down and actually work on getting it done then the item on the list is alot more likely to actually happen. I can say all that but yet I rarely ever do it! I am sorry that you have had to cancel all your plans for the week. I hope you are starting to feel better. Bronchitis can wear you out. It was good that you were able to get into the dr so quickly. I would have never have thought taking a daily temperature could be such a valuable exercise unless you were trying to conceive but you have demonstrated how helpful it can be.

Fiona said...

I sort of react to the term "bucket list." I don't even know why, really!

I don't have a "list" yet, I just haven't been able to make one. I grew up in a family where overseas holidays etc. were just unthinkable. Still to this day it makes me feel so awkward to write a list of things like that to go after.

There's also lots to be said for serendipity and unplanned things...it's the unexpected great times (like your last post) that you can't plan for but are so fantastic!

Nikki (www.bookpunks.com) said...

I react to the term bucket list that way too.

Anyway, I don't have a list. At most I'll make a list from year to year. But I find my priorities and my shifting too much to find a lifelong list of much use. Interesting concept though.

Moonwaves said...

Hey, it's kind of nice to know that I'm not the only one who thinks bucket list is annoying. :)

I think I might add another page to the blog with some of the things that occur to me from time to time. I have a list of things that I'd buy if I had the money (so that if I do have some spare cash I use it for something I actually want and need, instead of just spending it for the sake of spending) and actually, some of the things I could consider as being on my list are doing nothing more than waiting for me to find the time and money to do them. They might not be big life goals, but I'll add in things that I have been saying for years I'd like to do someday.