Twenty things to do before I die

I love a new blank notebook, especially those marble Mead ones that we had in kindergarten. They make me feel like the world is a friendly, exciting place full of possibility, and maybe cookies. Or at least pretzels. There are a bunch of them scattered throughout the house, from all different eras of my life, some filled, some not. Yesterday I found one from when I lived in Cairo (so circa the second half of the nineties) and in it was a list:

Francesca's List of Twenty Things to Do Before I Die

I am somewhat amused (or even bemused), from my vantage point of more than a decade later, by its randomness and scope — “Speak French fluently” vs. “Take a pottery course.” Really? I mean, I’m glad some of my life goals simply a matter of signing up at the local art center as opposed to having to be reborn as a 5 foot 8 ectomorph with really bendy feet (because then I could have been a ballet dancer). Although now that I think about it, perhaps that was on purpose, to create a list that mixed concrete, achievable goals with more ambitious ones.

The more I reread this list, the more I feel a sense of kinship with the much younger me who wrote it. Clearly, I was not in my first bloom of optimism. Dancer (for example) is not on the list. Neither is member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Bond girl or international woman of mystery. I had clearly given up on marrying a royal or a Kennedy, and had no intention of running for president. Of anything.

Yet  there was a sense I would still do things both small and big. I like that I didn’t put an expiry date on the list. Not “20 Things to Do Before I’m 30″ or even 40 (thank goodness, because that would have depressed me mightily). Just “Before I Die” which is, pretty much, when I’m going to stop achieving things except possibly polluting a small bit of ocean with ash.

I’ve never been all that Type A about things. Really, I’ve just gone places and done stuff. Yet, lurking in the back of my psyche, trying not to be noticed, is a desire to truly DO things. Achieve things. Cross things off a list. In most bits of my life, I feel like Sisyphus, rolling a rock uphill only to have it roll back down. Yet, as Camus pointed out, we must assume that Sisyphus was happy and I get that. I am happy. The struggle is the point.

Still, I recently realized that I am ambitious and it was no good letting that ambition sit gnawing at me, like a rat in a silo. Surface looks okay, but don’t dig down. So I thought it might be interesting to look at each of these goals in turn. So that’s what I’m going to do.

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