I’m not saying that I believe the Mayan’s calendar.  I’m not saying that I think the world is going to end tomorrow. I’m just saying, what if it does?

If the world ends tomorrow, 21st of December 2012, I’ll  have spent approximately of  8185 days and 20 hours and 56 minutes on earth.  I guess the day before my imminent death is too late to realise that I never had a bucket list as such, isn’t it?  Take a minute, think about your ‘bucket list’ (a list of things you want to do before you die, if you weren’t sure).  Have you done everything?  Can you do everything by 11am tomorrow morning?  How about looking at what you HAVE done, instead of looking at what you haven’t?  I’ve found myself reminiscing a lot in preparation, looking back at the successes as well as the things which maybe didn’t go quite so well.

I just found this website, maybe if we don’t die tomorrow we should all go and make lists? www.bucketlist.org

Anyway, I was traipsing through bucketlist websites, and as much as they were pretty repetative and full of exciting ideas, admittedly they weren’t all necessarily achievable.  I mean, skydiving over Mount Everest or abseiling down the Empire State building may sound like great things to do before you die ( if you’re scared of heights it may well be the last thing you do before you die), but I was looking for something a bit more…common.  Things that you could look back on and think “you know what, I did that, I achieved something and I didn’t even realise it.”  That’s when I came across this list of 50 Achievable Things To Do Before You Die.  The ones in bold are the ones that I have done:

1. Turn round and look at something you’ve just tripped over in the street – then realise you’re spending slightly too much time doing this to look entirely normal, and move onwards.

2.Buy something on impulse

3.Say “I can’t” when what you mean is “I don’t want to.”

4. Read a book, any book.

5. Absent mindedly put something in the fridge that doesn’t belong there.

6. Laugh at a private joke, just as somebody is passing you in the street, making them paranoid.

7. Hope that (6) has just happened to you, rather than something embarrassing being on your face or your flies being undone.

8. Frown at how much you have to do in so little time.

9. Squeeze a spot.

10. Feed a bird or animal.

11. Whittle a new hole into a belt.

12. While online, do something you’re not proud of.

13.Put leftover ingredients together to make something that’s simply inedible, no matter how hungry you are.

14. Run out of toilet paper at some critical moment.

15. See the sun come up.

16.  Look at somebody’s bum.

17. Put more than one pair of specs or sunglasses on at the same time.

18.  Lick uncooked cake mixture off the spoon.

19. Eat so much of something that you have problems breathing when you sit down or moving when you stand up.

20. Surprise the postman by pulling your mail out at your side before he’s finished pushing it through.

21. Play with something until it breaks.

22. Admire yourself in a mirror.

23. Catch an egg before it rolls off the table.

24. Part your hair a different way.

25.  Order a ‘half’ of something alcoholic.

26. Suffer brainfreeze.

27. Trip over a shoelace.

28. Use a leaf as a bookmark.

29.Put more money into an arcade machine than you originally intended.

30. Check your e-mails and when you’ve received nothing check them again just incase there’s a server error.

31. Pack a bag/suitcase too full, then unpack it again with a heavy heart.

32. While walking, go slightly out of your way to admire somebody that’s hot.

33. Pick up a hammer by the wrong end.

34. Owe something.

35. Fire an elastic band at somebody.

36. Speak to a computer screen.

37. Walk into plate glass.

38.Wear odd socks.

39.Enjoy a song purely for nostalgia’s sake.

40.Rehearse an argument in your head and put the other person firmly in their place.

41. Knock on a door with a jaunty rhythm.

42. Notice that you’ve received too much change but do nothing about it.

43. Bite into a tomato and have it fire all over you.

44. Give directions.

45. Sit on the floor when a perfectly good chair is available.

46. Immediately click with somebody.

47. Pull the label off an item of clothing and accidentally rip the hem it’s attached to.

48. Play Pooh sticks.

49. Forget to water a plant.

50. Make a list.

I’ve done 80% of the things on this list, which considering I don’t wear belts, don’t eat tomatoes and don’t drink alcohol is not too bad.  Balance it out with things that I have achieved that aren’t on this list- Young Citizen of the Year (insert smug grin here), swimming with dolphins, the first kiss, hitting a bulls eye in archery, helping with turtle conservation in Sri Lanka, I even went on an exchange trip and wasn;t brutally murdered by the language barrier.  The kind of things that appear on other bucket lists I read.  So now, when (potentially) the world explodes into a billion pieces tomorrow and kills us all, it is no longer necessary to look back at life and think ‘I never skydived over Mount Everest, I’ve wasted my entire life’.  Look back and think ‘Hell yeah I wore odd socks to work and I didn’t give a damn.’, because sometimes in life it really is about the little things.

Bring on the apocalypse.