Bucket List

Tada. Yes, the title of this post is yet another nod to the make-middle agers- feel-alive-and-rejuvenated movie genre, but I swear it is purely coincidental. As it happens, if you keep reading until the end of this, you will be privy to list of the 51 activities/accomplishments/dreams that I simply MUST achieve before my demise or this beautiful face and utterly charming personality will have been wasted on a perfectly useless human being.

Now, congratulations! As your eyes scan these oh so cleverly written lines of sort of awkward font (I didn’t realize it was all caps until I read my first post for the third time) you are witnessing history, as this is my second blog post. Ok, so it won’t make the books, but in the chronicles of Melissa this is fairly outstanding because 1. this makes double the amount of posts I’ve written on each of the four blogs I’ve previously begun and then promptly abandoned (may those failures rest in peace somewhere in the cyber universe. Also, hello progress.) and 2. I am fulfilling number 51 of the revered bucket list: Blog, for real.

I’ve spent quite some time feeling as if I’ve never accomplished anything at all. I know said feeling is entirely inaccurate as I’ve gotten to do, see and, most importantly, learn so much already in just 24 years. But it’s hard to argue with emotions, even though emotions are vastly overrated and illogical. Damn Homo sapiens. I just can’t fight the feeling. I guess it’s just because for every one thing I’ve done, seen or learned, there are 50,000,000 things left that I haven’t. There’s just so gosh darn much of this world. A lifetime is really not long enough to get it all done. Ugh.

Ok, sorry. Stay with me, please.

Without further ado, here is merely a penny’s worth of stunts I would like to pull off in the next 60 or 70 years (God willing):

1. experience pregnancy
2. adopt children
3. be an event planner (score! That’s two I can check off!)
4. be fluent in French
5. and Portuguese
6. live in a foreign country for more than a year
7. join the Peace Corps (this has almost happened. Twice. I simply have zero follow-through.)
8. climb a mountain (or just walk up it, I’m not trying to die.)
9. hide away in a very private house directly on the beach in the tropics
10. ** something scandalous about said house in #9** I won’t subject you to that. ;)
11. wear a real whale bone corset and accompanying period outfit
12. be an actress (not necessarily professionally--- I’ll take community theatre)
13. sing in public. Alone.
14. get published
15. do some kind of work for National Geographic
16. fall in love (you know, the kind of love that lasts through the centures!)
17. own a house
18. own a ridiculously large piece of land
19. invent my own completely unique recipe from scratch
20. go skydiving
21. go cliff diving
22. go parasailing (kind of whimpy, but I’ve never been!)
23. take pilot lessons
24. own a vintage Aston Martin
25. go to the Meredith Castle ruins in Wales (ancestors)
26. take my mama to the Scottish highlands
27. visit Vatican City
28. visit Jerusalem
29. have a crazy sordid love affair with an Italian (or Spanish/Portuguese/Argentinean) man
30. go to an Olympics meet
31. see Britney Spears live (don’t hate)
32. ride a mechanical bull
33. have a “The Hangover” experience in Vegas
34. take an all girls trip somewhere truly fabulous
35. have a hot body (forever a work in progress, and probably least likely to happen on this list)
36. have an Earth-shattering spiritual experience
37. visit as many places as humanly possible (kind of a cheat, I know)
38. be 100% debt free (damn you, student loans)
39. grow a garden (well hot damn, another one bites the dust- checked this bad boy off this summer)
40. make a legit family tree (almost did this on ancestry.com- went all the way back to the 1200s on one side of the family. Couldn’t finish because that shit’s expensive!)
41. take my Granny to Paula Deen’s restaurants in Savannah
42. create/complete a cross-city scavenger hunt (anyone down?)
43. collect something (like, hoarder style)
44. learn to sew (my Nana tried to teach me when I was in high school. I didn’t appreciate it then. I would give ANYTHING to have her back to teach me now. She was the best seamstress. And now I’m crying.)
45. own a vacation home
46. have a family/community farm
47. learn to play an instrument
48. cook an authentic Indian meal
49. learn to reupholster furniture
50. learn calligraphy
51. Blog, for real.

Yes, she’s ambitious. Yes, it’s not as enthralling as you were probably expecting. CONFESSION: I’m really simple when it comes down to it (shocking, I know). I feel more accountable to this list now that it’s typed (its only form prior to this was a handwritten XL index card) and permanently ‘out there.’ Hold me to this. I’ve done some pretty spectacular things. I just need to keep reminding myself of that so I don’t spend my whole existence wishing my life away. I’m most proud of these: studying in London, teaching English to an Iraqi refugee family, and being a really decent friend and sister. If I only accomplish three or four more things on this list, I will have had an amazing life. Sorry, this was so long. Cheers.

P.S. I would LOVE feedback and to hear some entries from your bucket list.