My Boring Bucket List

Yeah, no thanks.
Photo by SanFermin from Pixabay.

7 minutes

Everybody has dreams. Some want to climb Mount Everest. Others want to visit every country in Europe, make a billion dollars, or finally invent those hoverboards we were all promised by 1980’s cartoons. I also have a few of those big dreams; chief among them, being a widely-read fiction writer. But most of my ambitions are fairly modest. You might even call them boring.

Heck, I would have called them boring a few years ago. Too easily achieved. But as mentioned in previous entries, I don’t find myself with a lot of extra time these days. Even when I stumble upon free moments, the tyranny of many choices prevents me from finishing, or even from getting started. Still, there’s a bit of drama in having a list of perfectly ordinary things that you could easily do, if only you would do them. At the very least, my Boring Bucket List gives me something to look forward to...one of these days.

Learn Higher Math

I hated math when I was younger for the very same reason some “unathletic” people hate sports. The younger me stupidly bought into the idea that there were “math people” and “literature people,” and that my apparent limitations in the former subject were somehow innate. With hindsight, and a fully developed adult brain, I now see that math is an exciting subject, and that there really isn’t any good reason that I couldn’t go on to re-learn all the stuff that used to make me frustrated. Which is to say, everything past Algebra I or II.

My attitude about math has changed a lot. I find it extremely interesting now, though my past struggles help me to sympathize — and be patient with — the students who “just don’t get it.” The reality is that many of them don’t get it yet because their capacity for and interest in abstract, context-less forms of knowledge just hasn’t developed yet. Mine is much better developed; which is to say that I have an adult brain, and not the brain of a ten year old. However, the ten-year-old version of me had one significant advantage over the current me: he had time to pursue all his interests. 

Therefore, I’m really interested in reading through more than the first couple chapters of this book:

This book is great…up the point I stop reading it, and do something else.

And speaking of books I haven’t read or finished...

Read All the Cool Books on My Shelf

The amassing of books is a kind of addiction. For bibliophiles like me, just having a book makes you feel as if you also possessed the knowledge or experience that it contains. My book goals fall into two categories: those I’ve started reading and for some reason haven’t finished, and those that I really like the idea of reading, but haven’t even started.

Those I’ve Started Reading

The math book pictured above is fascinating. The section on fractions is extremely engaging, and has helped me to demystify them for my own 5th Graders. There’s literally nothing in this book that is not worth reading. I really, really like it. And for some reason, I’ve started it multiple times, genuinely enjoyed it, wanted to read more, and then never got any further. 

Here’s another book I absolutely love:

As you can see from my (multi-colored) highlights, The Brothers Karamazov is an excellent book. At least I assume so.

The Brothers K totally sucks me in…every time I start reading it, and stop around page eighty. Why do I stop reading a book that I love, and that seems to push all my literary and philosophical buttons? Hell if I know. I think I’ve tried to read it twice, before life intervened. Maybe third time’s the charm?

Those I Really Like the Idea of Reading

There may be a few more books in this category than in the former. Here’s a tiny sample:

I really like the circus. One of my fondest childhood memories was seeing the Cole Bros. in California, and I was lucky to be able to take my children to one of the last performances of the Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus. It moved me so much that I cried on the way home from Baltimore. I even published an article in the American Conservative about that. And you may be able to tell from my fiction that I’m a big Ray Bradbury fan. My good dad, knowing my interest in weird carnival people and the like, bought me the books pictured above. That was two or three years ago. I still can’t wait to read them, someday.

I also have an off-and-on interest in extraterrestrials. It’s not even so much the aliens themselves, but what you might call the epistemology of the weird. Just what would have to happen before an ordinary, reasonable person could believe in something so out-of-the-norm? I find the subject fascinating from that angle, whether or not there really are little green men. The novel on the right, also passed on by my dad, is about just that sort of thing. So you’d think I’d have read it by now…

Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote another one that looks good. They say it’s a great work of modern literature. I’ve kept it around for that reason. I have a feeling I’m really going to enjoy it, assuming I take the time to enjoy it. It may take a hundred years or so, but I’m sure I’ll get around to it.

Blaze a Trail in My Nearby Woods

We live by a state-owned forest that nobody can develop, but which is also not fenced off. Near us there’s a clearing that leads to something like a deer trail that has grown over with time. Nobody goes out here, so the place affords me a chance to go walking in the woods without all the things I hate: signs, rules, and people with frowning faces and just enough power to be tyrants. All I need do is extend the deer trail, and my kids and I will have untroubled access to a wilderness wonderland.

Well I’m happy to say that we got started! Today I took my boys out armed with a pair of garden shears. We made good progress on the first quarter mile of almost trail, before we ran into a section that will definitely require the use of my portable weedwhacker. I can’t wait to go back! (But will I?)

Learn Natural Navigation

Wouldn’t it be cool to be the sort of person who can just casually point over his shoulder and say, “Well, I mean, that’s west, so…” Among the things I’d like to be able to do, knowing where the hell I am is one of them. It’s disturbing how often I find myself relying on a GPS. And being able to read trees, and brooks, and moss, and wind, and the sun, would all be extremely interesting. If you can believe it, I have a book on the subject. I may even read some more of it. Here’s hoping.

Learn Astronomy

Along these lines, understanding the moon and the stars and their movements through the night sky would be dope. I can’t tell you how often I’ve read about some perfectly ordinary person from the olden days who could glean meaningful information about reality from the look of the night sky, and then found myself asking, “Why, Joey, are you so ignorant?” I’ve attempted to address this problem, even devoted serious time to it. It’s always very engrossing — in the moment — until I close the book, and forget everything I just read. Perhaps I just need to pay attention to the night sky for more than a few consecutive days in order to retain anything. Or maybe my memory is just terrible.

Improve My Memory

A few years ago, I learned of an ancient strategy for storing data in one’s brain. Classical and Medieval thinkers would apparently memorize the layout of a temple or cathedral, and then use it as a physical scaffolding upon which to hang all their knowledge. This is pretty much the best idea I’ve ever heard of, and it tracks completely with what I’ve learned about learning from teaching. There’s no better way to retain something, than  to associate it with a known pattern. But like everything else in my life, I’ve found a way to overcomplicate the simple beauty of this idea.

Photo by Skitterphoto from Pixabay.

For example, no sooner do I start trying to place a bit of data in a section of my mental cathedral, then I get all twisted up about exactly what part of the cathedral it should to go in. I mean, what if I put it in the sanctuary, but it actually goes in the nave? What about facts that overlap multiple categories? Most do! What if I have the categories wrong? What if I run out of categories, or learn that everything has to be shifted around, because the initial categories I chose were too narrow or too specific? As you can see, my brain is a mess.

Learn Guitar

I love music, and have a good singing voice, and perfect pitch. I also have an excellent memory for lyrics, and long spindly fingers. With all of this going for me, you’d think I’d have acted on my long-standing desire to learn to play the guitar. I mean, I am one of those people who wants to play the guitar badly enough that I get jealous when other people play it, and have to restrain myself from engaging in air-guitar fantasies in which I can actually play all the stuff that I can basically sing. I also have a book on guitar playing, and bunch of guitar picks that a sibling bought me a few years ago at Christmas (when I was especially vocal about my determination to learn guitar.) I even had a guitar, for a while, before my children gradually destroyed it. 

So what’s holding me back? The same old thing, I’m afraid I won’t have time to actually learn the guitar, or that the time spent learning it will cut into all of the other purely theoretical things that I also want to learn how to do. That’s stupid, I know. But there it is.

Learn French

I’ve always loved the French language, and there was a half-year there where I actually practiced French every day. I was really hardcore about it...at least I thought I was. I have not one, but two copies of the Little Prince, with French and English on facing pages. I was a Duolingo addict, and went out to rustle up several French pen pals. But then it sort of...faded. Not my interest. Just sense of the possibility of actually mastering the damn language in the time I have in this life.

Photo by christianlechevallier on Pixabay.

Of course, when I started, mastery was not the only point. I just liked learning the language because of its beauty. They say you shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. That sounds like really good advice, for somebody. 

Miscellaneous Assorted Goals:

1) Get back into card magic.
2) Learn computer programming.
3) Volunteer at a soup kitchen or prison ministry.
4) Learn to sail.
5) Go scuba diving.
6) Buy a Class C van and drive to the Grand Canyon.
7) Write more poetry

Make a Plan for Doing All of the Above

One of these days I’ll have to sit down with pad and paper, and come up with a strategy. I’m really excited about this. I mean, I can’t wait to get started! True, there are about a hundred other things I didn’t mention above that I also want to do, or go back to doing again, but you have to start somewhere. What’s really holding me back from making a plan is the suspicion that, once all these things are staring up at me in shiny gel ink, I may realize that I can’t do them all. 

On the other hand, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve discovered how much time one wastes, and how quickly the years go by. Perhaps the best option for a busy man is to spend one year on each project, beginning with those with the greatest appeal. Surely that would be better than waking up a decade from now, and finding I’d done none of them. And I can save the rest for Heaven.

But enough about me. What are the perfectly normal and easily accessible goods that you’ve been putting off? What’s your Boring Bucket List?

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