Bucket List

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Well! Since we arrived in Spain over 6 weeks ago, this is the first afternoon of solid cloud we have seen, and very windy with it. So instead of being lazy and concentrating on doing nothing in the sun, an opportunity to start a blog post.

I loved the film “The Bucket List” with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, 

and fully get the idea of listing things and challenges to do, or to see or to experience, and then ticking them off the list, bluntly before you “Kick the Bucket”! 

Don’t worry – I will be around for a while yet! 

Personally, and in my opinion, setting goals in life and career can only bring frustration and disappointment when not achieved or only partly achieved. And unfortunately with the good things come the bad things – some unexpected, but many inevitable in the course of life.

But at the same time I am very lucky that life has resulted in me being able to say that! 

If I now write a retrospective list of things that I have done, or seen or experienced, since just the start of the 21^st Century, in my personal world and sometimes as a result of my job, often shared with Gail, Kate and Paul, and family and friends, my so-called “Bucket List” is actually quite long, and having ticked them off very satisfying. Things that money can’t buy such as seeing our daughter, Kate, graduating from University and then successfully developing a successful career; meeting and then marrying a good man in Paul, and together making a happy home together into which our granddaughter Amelia arrived in 2012, is a series of "items" which would have to be at the top of the list. 

I would also have to follow with a list of people who I met through work, many of whom became good friends, and provided a long string of happy and memorable events, including weddings, births, christenings etc.

Then we have had great holidays - in USA (including Hawaii), Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, Ireland, Barbados, France, Italy, Spain, not forgetting many good breaks in the UK; work trips - many more than once, to South Korea, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, Sweden, Slovenia, Finland, Norway, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria. From such holidays and visits, highlights of these could be additions to the Bucket List – seeing the Barrier Reef, flying over a volcano in Hawaii, looking towards North Korea over the border, visiting the Grand Canyon, seeing the Northern Lights . . .

And what about. . .? That’s the point of this post. I think if I had written a Bucket List, many of the above and many other things would not have been there. And then just last week we experienced another unexpected event here in Spain, to add to the retrospective Bucket List. 

But that’s another blog post to come – “Fallas 2014”.