Bucket List

These days it seems like everyone has a bucket list. It's something I never really thought of until recently. Watching my mother pass away in 2019, and then being diagnosed with breast cancer and asthma in 2020, and osteoporosis & a brain malformation in 2021 (whoever said your 40s are the best days of your life is a f***king liar) made me realize that there's absolutely no time like the present to finally write down all those "someday I want to..." dreams and start crossing them off.

So, in no particular order, here it is:

• Go skydiving--accomplished 2021
• Take a hot air balloon ride
• Donate blood
• Run a mile without feeling like I'm dying
• Attend a shooting session with different types of firearms
• Ride in a helicopter
• Take guitar lessons for a year
• Visit Library of Congress
• See a wolf in the wild
• Visit the Grand Canyon
• Drive the entirety of Route 14 (Chicago to Yellowstone National Park)
• Walk to work (about 9 miles)
• Visit all 29 libraries in our consortium
• Take an Alaskan cruise
• Take a cruise to Puerto Rico
• See a play at the Globe Theater in England
• Visit the Book of Kells in Ireland
• Publish something I’ve written
• Attend a black-tie event
• Meet someone famous--accomplished 2006 (Jerry Springer, of all people)
• See the Northern Lights
• Visit all 56 Carnegie libraries in the state of Illinois that are still A) standing and B) serving as libraries today

Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed for any of us. As Morgan Freeman says in The Shawshank Redemption, you either get busy living, or you get busy dying.

Here's to 2022!