Reverse Bucket List

The Reverse Bucket List is about goals that have already been accomplished. Casting backwards to look forward and a perfect Mercury Retrograde kind of list to make.

“Wait, define Reverse Bucket List —”

I stumbled across the notion of the “Reverse Bucket List” someplace online, and it was lead-in for goal setting. Probably selling a “Goal-Setting app,” but I don’t recall. No link as this one is from a swipe-file, and I won’t source it directly as I am loathe to advertise for nefarious websites. However the idea, the concept, once I figured it out from the title, “The Reverse Bucket List,” it’s about going over what we’ve already done.

Many, many years ago, I had an article featured on the front page of AOL, back when that kind of thing mattered, it was a yearly astrological over-view, for Elvis. Front page exposure.

My best years in Austin, in a trailer park in South Austin, I was able to swim in Barton Springs, most near every day. Accomplished that, several years running.

Last winter, I caught a huge “Red,” a redfish, red drum that went over 36 inches. Set the fighter free. Previously, not once, but twice, I’ve nailed those 27+ “specs” (speckled sea trout)

Lived in the desert of the American Southwest.

Hurricane was on my list, but 70+ MPH winds on the shore of Austin’s then Town Lake, with waves crashing into me cured me of that one. That was as close as I cared to get.

Not long ago, a neighbor was asking about places to visit in Texas, and I shot him a link that’s more than a decade old, to spots in West Texas. I got lucky because I was paid to explore most of Texas, at one time or another, and although I didn’t acknowledge it at the time, it was part of my bucket list. Abeline, Amarillo, Lubbock, Midland-Odessa, Ft. Worth, Dallas, Houston, Corpus Christi, San Angelo, all sorts of places I’ve worked.

The work makes the places that much more interesting because I get to deal with local populations. In San Antonio, I’ve noted this before, but I’ve encountered people who never leave three square miles — for their whole life. In Roswell, NM (Little Texas), one afternoon, at the Wal-Mart, I’m pretty sure I encountered real aliens.

“Dos Amigos” in Odessa, TX — a bar with real, live, operating rodeo arena as part of the bar.

#justsayin

Bastille Day in Paris, done it.

Summer and Winter in London (UK), done it.

Oxford, check.

For a brief moment, my book(let) Drawer For Wishes occupied a #4 spot on Amazon’s “Literary Fiction Memoir something something” category. Amazon best-seller? Check.

    Ray Wylie Hubbard, live in Gruene, TX

    Joe Ely in Ft. Worth — Billy Bob’s, actually, great venue, legendary.

    The Texas Tornados, saw them there, too. Great, classic in performance.

    Lyle Lovett at the Majestic Theater in San Antonio.

    Hank III (Hank Williams III) at the Continental Club in Austin.

    Toni Price for Hippie Hour, at the Continental, also “back in the day.”

Not all about places — or things — or music — to see. It’s about a list of experiences.

So the “Reverse Bucket List,” makes sense now?