Do You Have a Bucket-list?

The other day I realized my bucket-list is just about empty.

{Clarification: I count only the things I can significantly affect, not wishes like winning the lottery, publishing with a big-five house, or becoming the queen of England. I suppose I could take steps to make any of the above improbably possible, but my list had only the things I could do if I chose to do them.}

The few things that were left on my bucket-list just leaked out or evaporated, as in an open bucket left in the sun for days. A few I had actually accomplished, at least to my own satisfaction even if no one else knows it.

Among the wishes that turned to vapor were—

*Standing in Moscow’s Red Square as snow is falling in January. Think Doctor Zhivago.

{Somehow the romance of it has gone away, and I hear it is much nicer in summer, anyhow.}

*Staying at a five-star hotel or an English country estate for a week with nothing to do except have breakfast in bed and stroll by the river before afternoon high tea.

{The budget isn’t there for this, but neither is the charm. I’d rather watch Masterpiece Theatre with others doing it.}

*Spending a month in Kyoto, Japan, taking in the traditional aesthetic.

{Something of this remains in me, but it’s barely a whiff of a longing and I recognize it as wishing inner balance and peace, not a physical space.}

And so on.

Bit by bit my bucket has emptied. I don’t know if this is a good thing, or an ominous sign of folding it in.

Oh, and I did want to write a truly great novel. I’ve done that, and my agent is shopping it. So far no takers, but for myself that one got checked off: done.

Do you have a bucket-list? How have you gone about emptying it?