Reverse Bucket List

At the end of 2014 I was having, let’s call it, a “crisis of faith”. Work had become routine, I had too many unfinished projects, time was flying by and I felt as if I just wasn’t doing – enough. I wasn’t doing enough work, enough creatively, enough traveling, enough of anything. What a wasted life I was leading. 51 years old and what, exactly, have I done or have I to show for my time here? (Wow, just writing that last sentence makes me feel like a giant ass.) The holiday season came and went with little fanfare. My overall funk grew.

“You’ve been a real bummer lately. When are you going to knock that shit off?” My lovely wife Becki, ever so subtle. Her keen sense of delicate encouragement is held in awe by many.  Now, I’m not saying she was wrong in any way. I’m not saying I didn’t need a swift kick in the ass, but damn! So, we talked, or rather, I talked. And Becki listened.  She didn’t tell me I was wrong or acting silly, she didn’t offer a fix. In the end, all she really said to me that night was she wished that I could see myself through her eyes. She told me that she could list all of the things she loved or admired about me, all of the things that made her proud, she could explain it all to me, but I’d have to understand it for myself.

That year I made a New Year’s resolution to create and continue what I was calling my Reverse Bucket List. There are two things that I have absolutely no use for, lists and resolutions, but somehow this seemed right.

We all know what a “bucket list” is, right? That list of fantastic, amazing, life affirming things you must do or see or experience before you breathe your last. Anything less would bring the sense of a life unfulfilled. Yeah, right. Sounds like a big heaping pile of regret to me. Well, I was going to to take it in a slightly different direction. I was going to create a list of all of the high points of my life. All the things I’ve accomplished, places I’ve been, people I’ve met, the most important events that I’ve experienced. And I planned on keeping this list going, forever.

I re-purposed a small moleksine notebook and started scribbling away. It was a full hour later when I finished that first session and I’d been smiling the whole time. My funk was lifting.

The notebook is always in my bag and I still add to it whenever I remember something special or when I have another worthy new entry. The first one is getting pretty full now. I hope to fill it and many other notebooks with my ongoing Reverse Bucket List.