The Bucket List and other Notable Meshugas

Eight A.M. and I'm already awake, caffeinated, and ready for whatever the day decides to splatter me with as I walk down the street. Funny how a little trip to Starbucks can leave you feeling inspired... Although this seems to happen to me somewhat frequently. I should check my blarchives (yes, I just combined the words blog and archives to make a supercool new word... I'm a writer, I'm allowed to do stuff like that).

On a serious note, my father's good friend has recently been diagnosed with cancer that he statistically has little chance of surviving. As a family, we've been through this before, and as I sat there talking about it with my dad and sister, I wondered if the same were to happen to me, would I even try to get treated? Of course you can't decide until you go through it, and even then it is near impossible, but I think that if I were told I had a 3% chance of survival (knowing what I do about cancer treatments) I'd say to hell with chemotherapy and immediately start checking things off my bucket list.

Now, I'm 25. I don't really have a bucket list yet, and when I asked my dad what was on his he seemed reluctant to even think about it. I understand why, of course. Contemplating your own bucket list means to contemplate your own mortality. That shit is scary.

I don't know if it's just me, though, but I think that getting to cross things off your bucket list is a good thing, minus the cancer diagnosis.

Here's the point... (it's also been offered to you in Hollywood extravaganzas, including... yes, you guessed it... The Bucket List featuring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman)

Don't wait until you're diagnosed with something to explore your bucket list. Do it now.

Admittedly, if your List includes things like "Get naked on national television," "Steal a car from a Bentley dealership," and "Rush the field at a Phillies game," (someone got a nice taser-ing for doing that the other night), you might want to save those until the event of your demise is imminent. But if your list includes:
 

 "Attend Loy Krathong, the sky lantern festival in Thailand," 

 "Ride a gondola through the streets of Venice,"  

and "Go to Sakura Matsuri, the cherry blossom festival in Japan," 

... why not get working on those now?

It seems somewhat inappropriate to quote the New York Lotto Guy here, but "Hey, you never know."

And now for the word of the day (credit goes to my loyal blog follower and Starbucks friend, Martin):

Meshugas:
      Definition: madness, nonsense, irrational idiosyncrasy. Etymology: Yiddish. Usage: "I can't take this meshugas anymore!"