I started keeping a life’s list of things to do long before The Bucket List was a movie that I’ve still never seen. From what Google tells me, the movie came out in 2007, and since I started making my own list around 2001, I’m pretty sure Warner Brothers owes me a check.
My own bucket list is an assortment of places and activities and concerts and adventures and none of it involves jumping out of anything. I’ve never understood that. Why do so many bucket lists involve jumping out of or off of things? I won’t even do jump lunges. Forget jumping out of a plane.
Just like any other bucket list, mine involves things that are of significant interest to me. Perhaps what is different about my list though is that I try to cross off at least one or two items each year and have ever since I was around 19 or 20.
So far I’ve lived alone in a city I didn’t know, seen the Boss, CSNY and Stevie Wonder in concert, passed out full size candy bars on Halloween, visited Rome, taken in a Cubs Spring Training game at Sloan Park, hiked the Smokies, prayed at the National Civil Rights Museum and the World Trade Center Memorial, miracled strangers into Dead shows, given birth, and taken in the sights and sounds of Red Rocks. There are more, and the list only gets longer with each passing year.
I still need to learn how to drive a stick shift, teach myself to play Terrapin Station on the oboe, go to a Step show, kiss the Blarney Stone, visit the Taj Mahal, tailgate at Lambeau, and witness a game at Fenway. Unfortunately, so many of the things I want to do either involve cash I don’t have or vacation time I can’t get, so I supplement my list with things I can cross off in the interim like starting this blog.
I think it’s taken me awhile to get to this bucket list blog because deep down even though I have goals I’m also really lazy. I love nothing more than to fall asleep on my couch and eat chips. I don’t want to change out of my pajamas let alone write, so I mostly just think about it and then still don’t do it and then feel guilty and overcompensate in other areas like housework. I have no problems spending money on going to concerts or visiting faraway places. It’s the hard stuff on the bucket list, the stuff that means I have to get off my couch and use my hands for something other than eating that are always the most difficult. Oftentimes though, they’re also the most rewarding, so I keep them there to keep me uncomfortable, to keep me reaching for something other than the remote.
A couple years ago I got as far as thinking of a name for the blog: The Morgan You Know. Then my husband started his podcast, needed a name, and I lent it to him instead. He’s now well over 40 episodes in and I’m just getting started. It’s good we didn’t let that name go to waste though because it’s become our family brand. He talks. I write. We have a lot of things to say.
So this is the blog. A bucket list blog that will often include things I’ve crossed off the list or am currently working on in addition to other ramblings about things like awkward encounters with my kid’s friends’ moms. As a reader, you can expect this thing to be a bit of a mess for awhile, but know it will always be honest, fairly unapologetic, sometimes abrasive, firmly grounded in my opinions, and probably narcissistic because who the hell starts a blog who isn’t already a narcissist?
I hope you’re entertained by what’s to come but if you're not, keep it to yourself. This blog is on my bucket list and who are you to ruin someone else’s bucket list? You wouldn’t be able to live with yourself giving a bucket list blog a bad review. So either read it and love it or don’t read it and take it to your grave. Just know I’m truly grateful you made it this far. Enjoy.
Title Track: “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” Blue Oyster Cult. Listen here.