Kicking the Idea of the Bucket

Introducing the reverse bucket list of things I'm never going to do. Or will I?

Don’t like reading? Allow me to read it to you 👈

I will never saber a champagne bottle.
I will never ride a horse in the Kentucky Derby.
I will never climb The Great Wall of China.
(Not that one or the other one in upstate New York.¹)
I will never wade in a cranberry bog.
I will never go to space.
(Although I am technically already there, striding about with regal pomp upon this ball of hot rock floating in the universe, one speck of dust, a pale blue dot, yadda yadda. Along with 8.1 billion other people. But not all of them are doing the pomp thing. And none like me.)
I will never drink absinthe.
I will never get a degree in astrophysics.
I will never walk on hot coals.
(Because I think it’s stupid.)
I will never surf with a dog on my board.
I will never run around Stonehenge like a druid in the moonlight.
I will never do bartending “flair” as performed by Tom Cruise in the movie Cocktail.
(Cocktail is a film but also a soundtrack I bought on vinyl as a teenager because Tom Cruise was on the sleeve.)
I will never jump off something really high or out of something really high or off or out of something, really high.
I will never pet a giraffe.
I will never eat fire.

I will never discount the possibility that I may do some or all of the above things in the future.

I will never win a medal—gold, silver, or bronze—as part of a celebrated ice-skating duo.
I will never win the hundred-meter dash.
(And me calling it a dash rather than a race is not the only reason why.) 
I will never sing a Coldplay song at karaoke.
I will never throw a frisbee without it going exactly in the direction I do not want it to go.
I will never tell someone a secret I have agreed to keep for someone else.
I will never have a peel-off family applied to my car’s rear window.
I will never be happy with my signature.
I will never look at my ribcage in the bathroom mirror and not think: “That looks weird.”
I will never give unsolicited feedback.
I will never understand jazz.
(You don’t have to understand something to appreciate it.)
I will never judge someone for starting a sentence with “I don’t know who needs to hear this.”
(However, you should know that my smile is not reaching my eyes.)
I will never be able to rid myself of the scourge of junk mail.
I will never be a wax figure at a wax museum.
I will never spell jail as gaol again.
(Even though I just did now and when I was growing up that’s how it was spelled and any other way was “American.”)
I will never enjoy horror movies.
I will never hold a grudge that lasts a lifetime.
(I’m 52. I missed the lifetime window.)
I will never research NFTs or look up how crypto works.
I will never make the team.

I will never worry about never doing any of the above things.

I will never be cool.
I will never consider myself brave.
(Or original.)
(Or special.)
I will never not be afraid of phone calls.
I will never stop being cruel to myself.
I will never not be hurt by cruel comments.
(I will never not pretend I am not.)
I will never trust someone completely.
(I will never not be upset about this.)
I will never have enough time.
But there are things I will always make time for.

I will never stop trying to kick these nevers.

The list of things that I will never be or do or want or have or desire or pursue or give up is long.
But I will never be younger than I am today.
Right now.
This minute.
This second.
Which is why I can never not be what I am right now.
I can only be Me.
Working on the never knows.
Kicking the idea of the bucket.

Yours in tiny thought,

Janeen

Go behind the scenes and see inspirations for this post👇

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This week’s amends…

"I had broken myself of the habit of thinking in short song cycles and began reading longer and longer poems to see if I could remember anything I read about in the beginning. I trained my mind to do this, had cast off gloomy habits and learned to settle myself down... I began cramming my brain with all kinds of deep poems. It seemed like I'd been pulling an empty wagon for a long time and now I was beginning to fill it up and would have to pull harder. I felt like I was coming out of the back pasture. I was changing in other ways, too. Things that used to affect me, didn't affect me anymore. I wasn’t too concerned about people, their motives. I didn’t feel the need to examine every stranger that approached."

- Bob Dylan, from Chronicles, Volume 1 (and there’s no Volume 2, unless you consider The Philosophy of Modern Song the sequel.)

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On Rotation: “Go On Your Way” by Kasey Chambers

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Found this while looking for a clip about prop comics. Don’t ask.

Extra credit: Top 10 Movie Props of all Time

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I wanted a walking dolly as a little girl. And the one you fed… And a Cabbage Patch Kid. I got none of them, but whatevs.

Via Boing Boing

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1. I was Googling climbing The Great Wall of China (the actual one), and there’s a climbing route in the Gunks called The Great Wall of China which is not in China but in upstate New York. Here’s a little film about it. I’ve ridden my bike in the Gunks. It’s very up and down there.