Who makes a three item bucket list?

Brainstorming sessions are the best. Essentially, when you brainstorm, you write everything down. You don't make any judgments about whether what's being voiced is worthy or valid. Which is a good thing, because a lot of ideas end up being stupid. But in a brainstorm, everything counts until it doesn't.

That's how you start a bucket list. It's for the incredible, impossible, maybe-no-one-has-ever-done-it ideas. The crazy ones. The dumb ones. The good ones. And the great ones. Once you have a list of ideas ranging from realistic to "maybe someday" to "I can't imagine that becoming a reality," then you rate them on an importance scale of 1-10. The nines and tens become your life bucket list. If any of them are urgent, those are the ones you try to tackle first.

I imagine many of us have some form of a bucket list, but if we're honest, we do nothing about it. We have ideas of what we'd love to do someday, but our lists remain as-is: mental or written notes that without intervention or intention, will never happen. They will remain out of reach unless we make them a priority, either by saving for them, training for them, or working hard in some way for them.

I like to think of them as more of "living life to the fullest" lists. And so for me, I decided to start making an annual bucket list of a few things to work toward now. This year's is only three items long, but the first two are whoppers, requiring a ton of time, perseverance, effort, and in the case of racing, money. And of course, the realist in me wanted to be sure I put something on it that I knew I would make happen but I wanted to be reminded about daily. Without this list, I'd probably sit on my manuscript for another year or two or five. Waiting for someone to magically figure out that it exists and decide to publish it. Which is not a thing, so will never happen. Which is why "run into a publisher or literary agent at a party I'm not going to because of Covid who loves my idea and pulls out a book contract right then and there" is not on my bucket list. That would be dumb. But "publish my book" is.

So there it is. What stupid ideas do you need to brainstorm today?