The Alternative Bucket List

I follow a blog called Unclutterer. It's a really interesting blog that explores ways to unclutter your live, both physically and emotionally. The blogger, Erin, offers suggestions on how to reduce your amount of personal possessions, how to organize everything, products to aid (and impede) organization and uncluttering, and various other things. Her posts are always good for either a laugh (her Wednesday Uni-Taskers area always enjoyable!) or an idea to implement in my own life as I seek to be less cluttered. (She has yet to tackle scrapbooking, as far as I know. I'm afraid. I'm very afraid.)

Today, scrolling through my blog reader, I was brought to a recent post about an alternative bucket list. Instead of trying to summarize Erin's post, just go read it and then come back. I'll wait.

Since I recently breathed new life into my bucket list, this post caught my attention. However, when I went to the site linked to in the Unclutterer blog and read some of the comments, I couldn't help but thinking that this had really turned more into a forum for complaining. I can appreciate Erin's list of things not to do again - fighting for a parking space is not worth anyone's time. But it seems like the negativity that radiated from the comments on the original post only made me feel kind of depressed, instead of uplifted.

I don't think that was the intent. It can definitely be empowering to say "I'm not doing that again!" or "I won't stand for this anymore!" and some of the lists included items such as that. "I will not give up" was one that encouraged me, and "tolerate all the not-subtle racism around the mosque in downtown NYC" was an appropriate item for something people should not put up with. But I was surprised at the number of comments that included something about the disgusting nature of public restrooms. Really? Yeah, they're gross. We all know that. You know what you're getting into when you go into one. You're going to put that on your list of things the world should not tolerate?

Having said all of that, now, I'm not sure what I would put on my Alternative Bucket List, as I will call it - hey, I guess that can be item number one - I will not use curse words on my blog. Well, there's one thing. I should probably put something like I will not stress about the future I can't control, but hey, we're trying to be realistic here. Though, since I'm in the middle of a weight loss adventure (sounds so much better put that way than "diet"), I'll throw in this: I will not weigh over 200 pounds. I think that's a good start.