Jeff puts it this way,
"In the spirit of the movie, and in the spirit of trying to make 2008 be the year that we all start to do some of the things we would like to accomplish one day, I thought it would be fun to reach out to friends across Facebook and ask them to share some of the things on their "Bucket List" they hope to remove during 2008. For some of us, these are not necessarily our "New Year's Resolutions", but rather things we have been meaning to do for some time that we WILL get done in 2008."
Connie, knowing full well my powerful Getting Nothing Done skills, (I still haven't written a post she tagged me for last April) made sure to send me a direct message on Twitter to let me know she had tagged me. I responded that I would take a look, but didn't read her note until Tuesday evening. After doing so, I logged onto Twitter and learned that Ashley Spencer, aka @ashdpreggo, @ashDmama and @ashPEAmama, a 29 year old mother of 2 children, including a 2 month old baby girl, had lost her life in a car accident that morning.
Although Ashley and I followed each other, we did not interact that much, but I cared about her, having read her tweets throughout her entire pregnancy. While I remember thinking at one point that her pregnancy seemed to last forever (so I can only imagine how she felt) I was as happy about the November birth of Lucy as if I were her natural aunt. I felt like Lucy belonged to all of us. My heart breaks at the loss of Ashley and the loss her family has suffered. Ironically, I ended the day exchanging messages with Connie and tagging her with the sad news.
A loss like this makes the idea, not just of having a Bucket List, but of acting on the Bucket List more real and more imperative. Having to think and write about it has become more challenging, since I cannot make light of it --well maybe a little--the way I might have if I had written it Tuesday morning.
With that in mind, I will answer the question from a few perspectives.
1) What is on your Bucket List for 2008?
On January 2nd, I posted the GND: Getting Nothing Done trademarked process for creating New Year's resolutions. Essentially you find the electronic document of last year's New Year's resolutions saved on your computer, change the year to 2008 and save as "New Year's Resolutions 2008", then go back to your regularly scheduled programming. Steph Stockman then asked me through Twitter if I could give her my resolutions and I responded with a comment like, "Here's what they have been since 1993. Lose weight, get a new job..." You get my drift.
Because my new year's resolutions have remained resolute all these years, putting them on my Bucket List for 2008 seems superfluous. Let's just assume they're there. I take this question to mean,
"What do you want to accomplish specific to 2008?"Bucket List for 2008
- Better integrate my skills and interests into my professional life.
- Leveraging my book to build my network, do more public speaking engagements and get a contract and begin to write more books.
- Apply my growing knowledge of social media, social networks and Web 2.0 to my current job in an industry that has resisted those tools.
- Better integrate my skills and interests into my life
- I love my Twitter and Facebook peeps but I need to spend more time interacting face-to-face with people. I hope and expect that some of that interaction will be from meeting more of my Twitter and Facebook peeps in person.
- Continue to develop as a comedic writer and performer and blogger by doing the work.
- Give back in both the online and off line world through the Frozen Pea Fund.
- Recognize that my comfort zone has become my constriction zone and extricate myself accordingly with alacrity.
2) What is on your Bucket List for Life?
I see this as the list of things I want to accomplish before I die, particularly the things I would try to accomplish if I knew I only had 6 months to live. Some of them seem fanciful, some doable, but all worth trying.
- Win an Oscar. (If I had only a 6 months, it would be to go to the Academy Awards in person, probably as a seat-filler.)
- Buy a great NYC apartment
- Travel more throughout Europe
- Learn to play the bagpipes
- Drive the Zamboni at Madison Square Garden during a Rangers and New Jersey Devils game
- Play a round of golf at St. Andrew's
- Become the bench coach for the New York Mets
3) What is on your 1 Day Bucket List?
Ashley Spencer did not know she only had one day to live. Fortunately she spent the last day of her life watching and cheering her favorite college football team the LSU Tigers onto victory. Her last tweet the night of the 7th was, "So happy I can't stand it! Geaux Tigers!"
So what would I do if I knew I had only 1 day left to live?
I would go out to New Jersey to see my family and spend the day
- Drawing houses and skyscrapers
- Playing house, dolls and hide and see
- Watching my niece perform in a musical comedy
- Cheering my nephew at his hockey game
- Watching Top Chef with my sisters,
- Discussing baseball and politics with my brothers
- Eating my dad's lasagna
- Reading bedtime stories
- Hiding from the wolves and coyotes in the basement
What's on their Bucket Lists for 2008? I'm tagging:
- My sister and equally sporadic blogger, Suzanne Anderson.
- CreativeSage, Cathryn Hrudicka
- My Scrabble buddy Kevin Gamble
- Jon Swanson, assuming he hasn't been hit up for this one 100 times already
- PulverHeads leader Annie Boccio
- Jeff O'Hara who has been blogging twice as long as I have known about blogging
- JP Rangaswami, a friend that is a pioneer in integrating finance with social media
What's on your Bucket List for 2008?
9 comments:
Bravo, Cathleen. You have inspired me to respond to Connie's tag, when before I was probably going to GND it in the face of too much to do before leaving Monday for Macworld Expo. I was particularly moved by your one-day bucket list.
Thanks for the tag. Guess that means i'm it.
It may have taken you all night to write it - but it was definitely worth it!
Good bucket list!
I will note that AshPEAMama's tweets were protected, so anyone that wasn't on her list won't be able to see that if they click thru your link...
But you know, it was finding out that her last twitter was so joyous that helped soften the blow.
I like to think that I live my life in such a way that if someone said "if you knew this were the last day of your life, would you regret not spending it differently?" my answer would always be "nope... it was a good one."
That was very nice Cathleen!
I still haven't written the last post from when I was tagged, and it was way easier than this (what CDs are in your car's player.)
I'll do my best.
Cathleen, this is the best Bucket List I've read so far. Well done. I only hope that the time you spent writing this was also in avoidance of eleventy-four other things, otherwise your role as founder and goddess of all things GND is in jeopardy.
Seriously, the way you tied your list to Ashley's passing makes this exercise all too real. So I'm adding something to my bucket list -- I'll be in the audience when you receive your Oscar.
A fantastic from the heart post I too was shocked at the loss of Ashley we have all somehow grown closer in Social Networking than I might have ever expected. Its a great list and I love to join you in Getting Nothing Done.
Nik
Urp... you tagged me! Now I have to think! Seriously- I will do this one, and soon!
Okay, i'll write. But it will take a week or so.
You've done a great job of breaking this into useful segments. You've made a list be acheivable without removing the dream element. And you've made sporadic mean worth waiting for.
Wait, what do you have against wolves and coyotes?
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