Spring Cleaning--Create Your F@ck It List

I’ve always been a list maker, loving the feeling of scratching off a completed item, seeing productivity. Way back my college friends and I made lists our senior year…what we hoped to accomplish and what goals we sought. I remember sitting on the campus wooden bridge with my pals, all of us conjuring up images of our full lives to be.

Now my lists consist more of food shopping items and reminders to my ever-spacey self, like to send in a check for a school field trip or to pay that nagging parking ticket. I honestly haven’t made the time to compose a new bucket list--something resembling what my friends and I scribed in our early twenties.

If inspired fortysomethings have learned anything—should we just aim to live life to the fullest…and if so, what does that mean in terms of “to do’s”? Optimizing life? Always seeking joy? Checking off action items? If life is always full…how does that leave time for anything else?

I think about the nebulous bucket list floating in my head. Even without a formally written personal goal list--I wonder if any items that I used to care about would turn into regrets. Even regrets of inaction. So I searched online for bucket lists to see what others cared about and found a website called “Bucketlist” where you share ideas with others, and then check them off when accomplished. Some really “popular” ideas sounded idiotic…shave a coconut? Collect a jar of dirt from every state? Draw funny faces on all of the eggs in my fridge? 

 

Annoyed by sheer stupidity I decided to screw the bucket list.  What is on your list of things to just forget about? 

Here’s my F@ck It List:

1.      Getting manicures: With hands constantly in water, the chipping happens almost as soon as I breathe after leaving the salon.

2.      Learning how to make great Indian food: So many spices, a lack of a tandoori oven…if something is easy enough to purchase, do so.

3.      Staying up late to watch Jimmy Fallon: People post the funny clips anyway. Sleep is too important.

4.      Working at a job with little meaning: Working just for a paycheck? No, not at this point.

5.      Cleaning my house constantly: The floor gets messy 90 seconds after sweeping.

6.      Getting my plane flying license: This one stings, but the cost and time don’t fit in my lifestyle.

7.      Owning my own horse: Used to be number one on my childhood Christmas list for years.

8.      Ironing clothes: Wait, that was never on any list.

9.      Investing in relationships that make me feel bad: Too many quality people out there.

10.  Starting to watch Downton Abbey: Am probably missing out on extraordinary talent and entertainment, but I feel like I missed that bandwagon.

11.  Listening to my mixed cassettes again: So I can relive those combinations and recreate them digitally? Time to toss the tapes.

Hopefully spring has finally sprung, and even I get an urging to clean house. Time to purge activities that are unrealistic, too expensive, and bring little joy. It’s simple: if something does not give you more bang for the buck-et item, drop it.

If you’d like to check out people’s bucketlists --http://bucketlist.org/