Before you read today’s post I want to mention that apparently I was not the only artist to feel the pain of the Boise Weekly Auction results, and in a thoughtful and generous move on BW’s part the decision was made that all artists would receive at minimum $150 for their original cover art. So, if their work had not sold at a final bid of $500 or more (which would have netted them that amount as their 30%) they would still receive the amount paid in previous years.
Thank you Boise Weekly!
By the way, my offer still stands to my “Treefort Blues” tarp buyer — whoever you are — I would gladly buy back the tarp and give you a framed archival photo of the tarp taken by Jake Soper at Evermore Prints in exchange. You can contact me here at my website!
(Warning: Unrepentant use of one four-letter word in particular ahead.)
Ok, onward and upward….
So here’s the thing. I’m over 50. In fact I’m half way to 60 which frankly blows my mind because parts of me are still in Jr. High, while other parts of me still refuse to admit I even turned 40. I have friends in every decade of life — including one who’s pushing 90 — you go Elaine! But most of them do tend to be in their 50’s like me and at this point in our lives there seems to be a common obsession….
The Bucket List…
In other words, everybody finally admits that if there’s a middle (which is where we seem to think we all are at the moment) then there must be an end. And if there’s going to be an end then we’d better get busy and DO a whole bunch of stuff so we can say we did it while we’re lying in our death beds and the hospice nurse has that check list (because there must be a check list, right?) and she asks “Paris?” so we can say “Check!”
“Skydiving?”
“Check!”
“Fire Walking?”
“Check!”
“Learn to speak Tagalog?”
“Check!”
Here’s what I put on my Bucket List: call bullshit to all the pressure to create a Bucket List and then have to do those things just so you can cross things off of it.
And then I created a new list:
The “Fuck-it List.”
The best part about the Fuck-it list is you don’t even have to write it down. Of course if you like lists, and you like to write things down just so you can cross them off — which by the way you get to do immediately with this list — then write away!
I know you’re catching on already, but I’m going to tell you how this works anyway, at least the way I’m using it.
First, you are going to want to take a look at that stupid Bucket List that’s been weighing you down and then transfer at least half the listings over to the Fuck-it list.
Learn French?
Fuck-it.
Take up Scuba diving?
Fuck-it.
Ride the Trans-Siberian Railway?
Fuck-it.
Start Pilates?
Fuck-it.
Once that’s done I promise you you will feel 10 years younger and 20 pounds lighter instantly.
After the initial purge it just becomes a matter of self discipline. Any time you start to feel that uncomfortable “oh crap” feeling like: “I SHOULD go, do, learn, buy, eat, this thing before I reach the end of my otherwise pointless life” which you would formerly have put on your Bucket List, you instead put it on your Fuck-it list.
It’s the uncomfortable feeling that’s the decider. This is not a list for things you actually WANT to do. DO those things! But I am done, done, done with keeping up with the Jones’s Bucket List. Fuck their Bucket.
Cuddle a baby tiger?
Fuck-it.
Walk behind a waterfall?
Fuck-it.
Get a henna tattoo. In India?
Fuck-it.
Fill up a KFC bucket with Slurpee at 7-11? (Are you kidding me?)
Fuck-it.
Want what you have. Give what you need. And love your own life as you’re living it. Enough IS enough! (And yes, I need to be reminded of that myself on a regular basis.)
Work harder on becoming more enlightened?
Eh…I’m still marinating on that one.
