Blog #2- Bucket List

            Our time in this life is so ever short, it would make complete sense as to why someone would want to catalog events that they would want to one day accomplishments, a “bucket list.” I have always hated bucket lists my entire life, the notion that you make a list of “must-do’s” before you croak has always seemed a very morbid way of thinking about one’s own life. Rather than living for the here and now, bucket lists can have goals that could be forever unattainable. Another problem I have with these lists is that they are never really in a coherent order, while I suppose there lies the fun of it, marking off objectives in more of willy-nilly fashion than having to do one before the other, but I just find odd how in some cases, a list might say, “Spend three month in China,” followed by “Learn Chinese.” Considering the amount of time spent in a foreign land, I would certainly attempt to get to a point with its language that I would not have to camp outside the US Embassy the entire time. So with all of this in mind, I have created a “Life List,” a set of events as close to order as inherently possible to complete in my lifetime.

            The first (1) on my “Life List” would be that of graduating college. As at the time of writing, this being about a month and a quarter into the new semester of my freshman year, I still am very uncertain as to how I want to spend my life in the future. So many thoughts on careers boggle about in my head, trying to balance each one’s individual pay, hours, creativity, and areas of furthering my career as time progresses weighs very heavily on that of my soul day-in day-out. I know that my future journey in college will be much of the same issues I have been struggling with so once the last few credits grind to a close and I walk across the stage to receive my diploma (this time hopefully not as sweaty and sick to the core as with high school), I can smile, happy that the decision will not come back to bite me, but my career will bring me joy and a pay that I can support a family with.

            The second (2) item on this list would be to find love, absolute, everlasting love. This item may be irregularly placed, I may be lucky enough to find that before the four years are up, but in the words of my father, “You never can know if you love someone before you move in with them, like it or not, you hide a lot from a person if you can have moments away from them, always being there forces conflict, to test whether the love will last.” With these words of guidance taken into consideration, I think I would have to live with someone for quite some time before I could honestly say that this person was the other half of my being, pop the question (or have it asked to me), and be a married man. In this point in my life, I cannot really say I have truly loved another, besides that of my family, friends and my pets. I do not know if it is a matter of luck (which I am I not known for), my own person, a hopeless romantic, or that I have not kept my own eyes open for someone who has fondness for me. Regardless, I think this is something I need to have in life, as someone who has seen a happy marriage in that of my parents and the warm family environment that has persisted a warmness in myself and my siblings, I know that love is what I will need if I plan on starting a family of my own one day.

            Speaking of family, the third (3) thing on this list is, having a few kids. As someone who loves to be around kids and one who has had to look after my other two siblings, I really want the opportunity to share all of the wisdom I have gained in my years to a few children to call my own flesh and blood. The ideal, well the interesting coincidence would be if I could have 2 boys and then a girl in that order, not because I wouldn’t want a girl as a first child, I certainly have no preference, but my grandfather had two boys and a girl, the eldest of that bunch, my father had two boys and a girl, and I am the eldest of that bunch. So it would be very cool to continue this “tradition” of coincidences.

            The forth (4) thing on this list of sorts would be the zoo. The wondrous place that a lot of children remember the first time visiting, the curiosity that stems from seeing so many different animals that prior to that moment, hadn’t known existed unless previous told by your parents or seen in some other medium. Granted I have kids at this point, I would want to take each one to the zoo for the first time, watch complete childhood innocence and joy exist as wide eyes and even wider smiles branch out from the utter amazement in seeing so many exotic animals in one place.

            The fifth (5) thing on this list would be pets. I considered whether to put this before kids, but here is fine too. I absolutely adore pets, I love the lessons they teach children at a young age and how they transition in how you treat other people. As a pet owner myself, I have witnessed my two dogs make errors, as they accidentally knock things over, slobber or make a ‘mess’ on the kitchen floor for whatever reason. It is in these moments I have learned moments of calm when faced with a great deal of stress. I learned not to yell at an animal whom did not know better, but instead meet said mistakes with love and comfort, something that a lot of us around the world need to work towards. Watching my dogs Sam and Max grow from puppies into old dogs has also taught me the value of life and the time on earth, not to squander it. I would be sure to adopt dogs or kittens in my later life so my children could learn these same important lessons and also receive the same joy from seeing a pet every day when you return from school.

I just thought this was cute

The sixth (6) thing on my “life list,” would be that of raise good kids. One of my fears here at college in choosing a major is that I will not have enough time to spend at home to be there for my future family. I am worried that a job that I would have would have me at work too much, or too tired that I don’t do much when I get home anyways. My parents have always been there for me, even when my father was put on third shift, he still always had time for the lot of us. I never felt like one parent was not there nor did I ever feel less opportunity to go to one or the other for an issue I was having. I can say that they raised me well, I was prepared on to go off to college and succeed. I want to do the same for my future kids, after they graduate high school and move on, I can thumb through old pictures, most likely crying, saying to my wife, “We did good.”

The seventh (7) thing on my list would be that of writing a book. It is this far down the list because I know first had of how hard it is to write a book. While I do not have anything published, I have tried many times in the past attempting to get a story going, always quitting after the first few chapters, worried that the final product won’t be nearly close to the vision of the dream. I know that once I retire and the kids would be out the house, I would need to keep busy, and I think writing could do this for me. I want to write mysteries, ones that I read now, tied to real life enough that I can follow along the same clues the author leaves the protagonist, but still challenging enough that I don’t know who the perpetrator is until the final few pages. This may be one of the unattainable goals that I had stated that I disliked about bucket lists, however I know that I am capable of doing just this eventually.

The eighth (8) and final thing on this list to have a peaceful death. Again, doing the thing I said I never liked about these lists, being morbid. However, I find a lot of happiness in the idea that one can leave this earth, with loved ones surrounding them and pass on with the feeling of being a success for the people around you. While I cannot choose how I leave this earth, I want to do it gracefully, my final show of pizazz and leave a mark on those who saw me live my life.

I think I just typed in Google, "My future" by accident, my mistake

While I am not a fan of visualizing leaving this earth, I am a fan of living. And to live, I think, is to have some sort of plan, a set of guidelines that you would follow in order to make sure all your needs and the needs of others are met before your departure. This is why I made a “Life List” rather than the tired old bucket list, rather than ‘before you die,’ I see it as more of a ‘how much can you live’ list.