Ran across this while tag surfing WordPress from my sick bed last week. Apparently a bucket list is a list of all the things you want to do or achieve before you “kick the bucket” and was the basic story line for a Jack Nicholson movie.

A fairly straight forward plan really. One simply makes a list and presumably puts time and effort into checking each item off.

So what would my bucket list include? Well, I think like most things it would be a living list/work in progress sort of thing that would be subject to revision over time.

My Bucket List

• publish a novel
• live in a house I helped build
• visit Vancouver
• learn to speak French
• be published in Analog and Apex
• write an op/ed piece for Time or Newsweek
• be able to run 5 miles daily again
• teach at the university level
• take a summer writing seminar at Iowa
• be interviewed about my writing
• make a living that will allow my husband to be a kept man

Okay for a start, I guess.

I am reading an ebook about owning and operating your own book store and it talks a lot about the importance of planning. Interestingly, I read an article on mapping career goals in a writing magazine on the drive back from the States just prior to the ebook. There is something for writing it down. Wishes. Dreams. Goals. Call them whatever you like, but there is power in naming.

Although one would not recognize me these days, I used to be the teacher who had her year plotted out and the first quarter’s lesson plans done on the first day back. My organizing methods were strictly my own, but I was organized. All this talk of bucket lists and mapping and planning in general has put me in the mood to recapture a bit of my inner school marm and harness my life a bit. Taking things day by day is not a bad way to go about life but it will not take one too far from the point he/she begins at either.

And so what is your bucket list? As always, write it in the comment or blog it and link back.