Get Busy

Here's a little helping of full disclosure for you.  I've been wanting- to some degree- to get this blog started for a long time.  And I haven't.  For a number of reasons.  Most of those reasons were over-thought and/or lame and/or valid (I'd be putting myself out there too much, I'd be too self-absorbed, etc.).  That said, now that I've managed to work up the courage... or stupidity... to actually get going, I've done nothing but struggle with how to actually get it started.

Well, that's not true.  I know the almost-too-perfect way to get the ball rolling.  And that's the problem.  It's so perfect, it's probably trite.  Damn.  Oh what the hell, if this is the worst I do with this thing then it ain't half bad.

"Get busy living, or get busy dying."

Yep, the classic line from the movie, The Shawshank Redemption (possibly the Stephen King story as well... I wouldn't know, I haven't read it, but I do know the movie rocks).  Anyway, yeah, that's more or less what this blog will be all about.  In fact, I thought bastardizing that line and using it as the name of the blog.  Gettin' busy living... the blog  or Living so as not to Die or something along those lines.  Pretty sure, regardless of how sparsely followed this inevitably will be, using that line to name my blog would result in a law suit.  And as much fun as it would be to meet Stephen King...'s attorney, that's not something I can really afford.

Anyway, that's what this is all about.  Getting busy living or getting busy dying.  Preferably the former.  See, the thing is, I- at age 29 no less- have a bucket list.  Only I don't generally refer to it as a bucket list.  That would be morbid.  And it would further promote my pseudo-obsession with humanity's  mortality.  After all, we are all dying in some sense.  We all gotta go.  Some sooner than others.  And that's just been hard for me to shake from my mind.  I'm dying and there's nothing I can do about it.  Hell, you're dying too.  You know what, go to a crowded park on a breathtakingly gorgeous day.  You know what you're going to find?  People.  Lots of 'em.  And everyone of them is dying.  The grim reaper stalks us all- following closer behind some than others- even on the most perfect days.  This is all a pretty screwed up way of thinking about life, and in all honesty, these thoughts do not dominate my day-to-day thinking.  But they definitely do creep into the back of mind often.  Probably too often.

And the fact that I'm kind of struggling with the idea of turning 30 is not helping.  For years now, I've told friends who were approaching the big 3-0 that it wasn't such a big deal.  Age is just a number.  How you feel is more important than how old you are and so on and so forth.  Turns out, I'm a hypocrite.  I have a hard time believing that turning 30 is going to do anything other than suck.  It just means I'm one step closer... and time marches on.  

The whole trepidation over turning 30 is a rather recent development for me.  The struggle with mortality has deeper seeded roots.  In either event, this kind of thinking really doesn't do anyone any good.  Particularly me.  But what can I do?  

Ah, therein lies the other crucial question.  What can I do?  Or rather, what do I want to do?  See, that was the question that really led to the creation of the "bucket list".  My lovely girlfriend Courtney would often ask me, "What do you want to do this weekend/tomorrow/next month/any time?"  My standard reply?  "I dunno."  Which besides being infinitely frustrating wasn't really true.  I had some ideas of what I wanted to do.  Vague and shadowy ideas.  Ideas I had trouble expressing or pulling out to combat the forces of inertia that kept me sitting on the couch watching TV rather than getting out there and living my life or at least having as much fun as I could.

Then, a few things happened in 2009 to change my mindset.  Finally, Courtney had had just about enough.  To paraphrase one of many frustrating conversations she had with me: "You keep saying that you want to do things but whenever I ask you what you want to do, you tell me you don't know and we end up wasting a day just sitting around."  Or something along those lines.  And you know what?  She was right (as she often is about me, frankly).  I knew there were things I wanted to do.  I really, really needed to figure out exactly what those were, really think it out, and actually start to get to work on- you know- doing them.  So I started thinking.

Then, in October 2009, my little sister Bree got married.  And in the course of the normal hubbub that surrounds a wedding details of her life with her soon-to-be-husband, Jason, emerged.  By the end of the wedding, as Courtney and I were making our way through the 16-hour trek from the Chicago suburbs to our Long Island home, the thought hit me.  Damn, Bree and Jason have really done some things.  The travels.  The activities.  The hanging out with friends.  They really, genuinely seemed to be living their lives- and enjoying the hell out of the ride.  Me?  Not so much.  And I was dragging Courtney down with me.  Fun times.

Inspiration struck in the middle of Ohio.  Somewhere near Sandusky, the Kanye West song, "Good Life" popped up on my iPod.  At one point he raps the line "... let's go on a living spree."  And that's when it really hit me.  Yes, let's.  That's exactly what I needed.  A living spree.  A chance to actually get out there, wake the hell up, and start really enjoying my life.  I spent the rest of the trip really thinking about all the things I wanted to do, experience, accomplish in the course of my life.  Things that would make me happy, things that would make me feel alive. No bucket list for me, I ordered up a living spree.  (Because I love the idea of being sued... really).

Ok, so it basically is a bucket list.  But my list was going to be different.  I was going to write down everything I wanted to accomplish by the age of 50 (presumably I would live after age 50 so it really wasn't a bucket list).  And further, it wasn't going to be everything I wanted to do, I was going to limit it to the top 130 things and experiences.  And I was going to live the hell out of those 130 or so things.  The day after we got back to Long Island, I bought a spiral notebook and went to town compiling my Living Spree list.  

Somewhere along the lines, though, it dawned on me that even though it moved the emphasis from death to age 50 (and also presumably to my last remaining "good years"- I can be so damn warped some times), the structure of the spree was all wrong.  If I had gone on a 23-year living spree, I'd find myself broke and dreamless by age 50.  At that point the living spree would have indeed become a bucket list.  What the hell would have been the point of continuing to get out of bed every morning; I'd have nothing to live for.  

Slowly, the current Living Spree began to take shape.  I eliminated the idea of accomplishing everything by the time I turned 50 (which subsequently led to the tweaking of some items).  I rethought the plan to limit the list to 130 items.  There really wasn't a practical purpose to such a limitation.  And besides, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the first 130 were not going to end up being the top 130 and furthermore, there were ended up being far more than 130 things I wanted to accomplish in order to say that I've lived my life.  And I'm sure as time goes on I'm going to think of even more.  The point of all this, I finally began to realize, had less to do with the number of things I wanted to do, and more to do with actually figuring out the things that would make me feel alive and then to get out and start experiencing them.  

I've been working on the list ever since.  Both in terms of adding experiences and goals, and doing my best to check things off the list.  Yes, I'm moving slowly in the effort.  Time and money are two very real concerns.  I also go through times where I put the Spree on the back burner.  The pull of the couch still wins on occasion. Or rather, too often.  But, creating my Living Spree list was definitely a start, and I can say that my life has improved.  I feel like I'm living more.  I'm enjoying my life more.  But there's much room left to grow there.  I guess, the best way to describe it would be that the Living Spree is a process.  

In the time that I've been working my way through the Living Spree, I've come to a couple of realizations.  First, living is much livelier with other people.  Wait, what?  All I mean is that it has been a lot of fun to experience the things on my list with other people.  Sure I could visit a place, or accomplish a goal by myself, check it off the list and move to the next.  That said, I've found that sharing these experiences and goals with my friends and family- the people I care about more than anything in the world- have resulted in far more meaningful- and fun- experiences on the whole.  (And by share I mean doing the things on the list with them.  To this point, very few people know about the Spree).

My other major realization is that I'm doing a terrible job of documenting the adventures of my Living Spree.  Some items lend themselves better than others to photo-documentation.  So I do have some photographs.  But beyond that, I have my red spiral notebook filled with my Spree list, the lists of progress I've made on multi-item goals, and the list of things I've accomplished on the Spree.  I have no record of my thoughts and feelings as I work my way through the list.  Nothing to help me remember the experiences outside of a few photographs.  I need more.  I need a way of holding on to the experiences, of being able to bring these times and places, goals and accomplishments back to life.  

Hence the blog.  To be honest, I'm still not sure about all this.  If someone were to ask me why I'm blogging about the Living Spree, I'd say I'm doing it for me and for the few people I know who really care.  It's going to be a way for me to look back, to remember, to see my progress, to see what I've learned along the way.  To that end, a private log or journal would probably be a more efficient and far... safer?... way to go.  Yeah, I suppose so.  But ultimately- as with actually working my way through the Spree, maybe sharing would be more fun.  Maybe it can serve as an inspiration for others.  I don't know.  I don't generally like to talk about myself.  "I" and "me" are two of my least favorite words.  But still... I don't know.  I think it might be fun and a great way to get to know people better and to let people know me more by putting this out there...despite my trepidation.  It might be fun for people to share some of their goals, share their thoughts on the things I'm planning- particularly if they have done some of the things I plan to do.  So to that end, I'd love to hear from anyone who happens to read this.  Comment away- particularly my friends and family.  Maybe it will lead to my adding more things to the Spree... maybe it will result in more company for some of these experiences.  Then again, maybe it will end with three posts and my pulling the plug on the whole thing.  Who knows.  But I'm giving it a go.

So yeah, up next will be the list in all its glory.  Subsequent posts will explain items on the list and detail my effort to work through the Spree and above all else, live my life.  In the end, yeah, we do all gotta go.  Can't avoid it.  But maybe what we can do, is choose to live out our days.  So...yeah... get busy living or get busy dying (sigh) that's god damn right.