Do you have a list, written or not, of things you want to do before you…expire?  If so, that’s your bucket list, a term that everybody seems to detest, but gets more usage all the time anyway.  I’m here today to state that YES!  Why not?  Keep a dang bucket list, if only in your cranium.  There’s power in that thing.

And it seems like recently, the bucket list phenomenon has dumped on me many ways; here are a few…

• The rock show.

I’ve found myself at two concerts this summer because, in part, friends had decided that seeing U2 and The Jayhawks were on their bucket list.  So what if I’m not a big fan of either?  A great time was had by all and my buddies accomplished a life goal.

• “The bucket list lie.”

Soul brother blogger Jonathan Fields disses the list and insists that a “list of one” (just for today) is a better way to go.  He gets swamped with hundreds of weighty responses.

• “Bucket List,” the movie.

While on my last career break (spending 69 days in the West Indies with my family) we watched this fine movie.  Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman offer moving performances as terminally ill elders, and it served to remind me that I was lucky to be drinking from that blessed bucket at that very moment.

• All to say…

I hope your bucket list has not been thrown out with the trash.  After all, the only way you’ll GET what you want…is if you KNOW what you want.

That’s true whether it’s as simple as a $25 concert at 1^st Avenue, or as complicated as island-hopping for most of one winter in a place where the starfruit falls off the tree and the Calypso music echoes over the bay.

Speaking of career breaks, for sure the only folks who achieve one are the ones who keep the faith, no matter how irrational.  These things take time—sometimes decades—to actualize.  But belief beats the alternative:  Giving up.  While the story is still being written.

Even during dark days and droughts, the bucket can be half-full, right?