Crystal Flower Necklace, White House | Black Market
My Christmas present from Wade! Yay!
I’m recovering from the holiday and digging out after the blizzard and trying to get my act together for the New Year. I’ll be back on New Year’s eve with a revised life list — are you working on yours? There’s no time like 2010! Or the present. Whatever.
Hope you all had a happy Christmas.
Last night, Leigh emailed me with a Very Serious Question about my life list: “Ok seriously … order haggis in Scotland? Surely you could find another reason to go to Scotland … maybe golf?”
She has a point. Although really, my plan is just to order the haggis. I’m going to make Wade eat it. I’m adventurous, but not that adventurous.
Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo by Daveybot, Flickr
Wade and I have always talked about going to Great Britain; sometimes we plan to go to London and sometimes to the Lake Country, and sometimes to Scotland. And then we look at our calendars and realize that tonight’s football game is at 6:00, not at 7:30, and that we’ll need to get dinner on the table in there somewhere and get homework done and …
You know how it goes.
And that’s precisely the idea behind the life list — it’s so easy to get caught up in the minutiae of the everyday, to while away the hours sorting laundry or picking up toys or sitting in carpool line or doing the eleven million other things that have to get done before it’s time to go to bed and get some sleep and then do it all again tomorrow. The life list is all the things I find myself daydreaming about while I’m pairing up hundreds of wee sweat socks and listening to a detailed plot summary of Star Wars: Episode Four and wondering which one Episode Four is again and why there’s always an extra sock and how many hours until the day is over.
Instead of daydreaming about all those great things I wish I were doing, I’m writing them down. And doing them, or at least as many as I can manage, which feels like a big undertaking on the days when I only barely manage to have a shower and eat some lunch. Which is a lot of the time, honestly. But on the days when I’m overwhelmed by the socks and the deadlines and the rush to carpool, the life list is a way to stop and breathe and plan something bigger and better and different.
What about you — what’s on your life list? What are the big — and small — things you’ve always dreamed about doing? And, more importantly, how are you going to actually do them? What can you do in the next month to make the list a little shorter? Start now and see where you are when October comes. I promise you won’t be sorry.
Hat tip to the very mighty Maggie Mason for the inspiration. Maggie is crossing things off her life list, and has challenged her readers to do the same. Are you in?
