A few weeks ago, in the late quiet of a winter night, I found myself thumbing through a journal that I had kept a couple of years ago. The journal, one of those moleskin notebooks, was filled with anguish, longing and uncertainty. While I was happily occupied with loving my daughter, coaching and consulting, being a foster parent, and singing with The Shirleys, I was simultaneously living in a state of acute fear and sadness, i had been diagnosed with breast cancer and was still undergoing treatment and was trying to make my way out of a wretchedly doomed love affair. Amidst the pages of despair I found this:

100 THINGS I WANT TO DO BEFORE I DIE.

Have you ever written a list like that? Your own little bucket list? I remember it took me a good long while. I was really reaching for ideas by the time i hit the 80’s but i pressed on to a 100. At the time that i wrote the list, I am not sure how confident I was that i would actually live to do even half the things on it. And some of the things on it seem utterly ridiculous now. I mean for some reason I wanted to get on Charlie Rose. I also wanted to build something beautiful out of wood. I found that comforting and true though i am not sure it would make the list today. Reviewing the list was fascinating. I couldn’t help but wonder how the final tally might have differed had I not been under such emotional pressure. But the real delight was in finding that I had completed- or was close to completing- a good number of the things […]