What’s in your Bucket? September Bucket List

What's in the bucket?

What's in the bucket?

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, September is always a month of changes and fresh starts to me, so I thought why not have a mini bucket list for September?

So here goes… my mini bucket list for the next few months:

  • Get active – for the past few years I’ve become more and more sedentary and it’s taken it’s toll. I’ve gained 30lbs over the past 3 years. Tuesday I’m heading downtown to the YMCA to sign my 16 year old and myself up for gym, swimming and maybe even kickboxing.
  • Eat better – see above. Or better yet see the stack of empty pizza boxes, take-out containers, and Tim Horton’s coffee cups in my kitchen.
  • Write more – honestly, why is it so hard to write? “I hate writing, I love having written.” – said Dorothy Parker. Boy did she nail it. I have a novel completely plotted out, partially written, but lately instead of writing the novel I’m thinking about the sequel to it, and the website I should create for it, and basically pencil sharpening but not writing it. I want to finish it by end of October. In time for National Novel Writing Month during which I will start the next novel in the series.
  • Reconnect with friends – I’ve really been terrible about this the last couple of years. There are so many people who’ve had a powerful impact on my life over the past 3 years in particular and yet I’ve not really touched base with them lately. I’m setting a goal of contacting one friend per day, be it via email, phone, skype, or face to face, to reconnect.
  • Say YES instead of NO more often – I’ve turned into a bit of hermit over the past year. All too often when I’m presented with an opportunity to get out and do things, meet people. socialize with others, I automatically decline. Or worse. I’ll accept the invitation. I’ll agree to plans. And then I back out at the last moment. I always regret it but I’ve been on decline/avoid/hermit auto-pilot lately.
  • Decide on a new place to live – for the past 2+ years I’ve moaned, whined, bitched and complained about where I live. I like my apartment itself well enough. My building is quiet, clean, and well maintained. The problem is it’s too far from everything. As a non-driver I have to rely on public transit to go anywhere and when it’s a 30+ minute ride to downtown Hamilton and another 60+ mins from there to go to Toronto or to see @Randy everything just seems to be too far. I’m hoping to move in the spring which gives me 6 months or so to decide if I want to live in downtown Hamilton or a different city. Burlington, Port Credit and even Halifax are on my maybe list. Time to look at the pros and cons of each and just do it already.

There’s probably a few other things I should add to the September list but that’s what I’ve come up with for now. Looking back on what I’ve written – it’s not so much a bucket list as it is a series of goals and intentions. Somehow saying I’ve written a “goals and intentions list” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it?

GapingVoid leaves Twitter leaving a … gaping void?

Hugh MacLeod, better known to some as GapingVoid, has announced that he has deleted his Twitter account.

MacLeod – cartoonist, author, blogger, all around Renaissance man – will be sorely missed by his legions of followers. You can subscribe to his blog to keep up with him now.

It seems that the more popular Twitter becomes, the more of the early adopters are shifting away from it.

Earlier this week Lifehacker.org featured a Firefox add-on called LeechBlock which allows you to set time limits and block websites (such as Twitter) that you feel suck up too much of your time.

As a writer (who tends to avoid actually writing as much as I possibly can) I know that communities like Twitter can be unbelievable time wasters but at the same time I know that I get a lot of value from the Twitter community as well. I’ve installed LeechBlock to hopefully cut down on using Twitter and other sites as procrastination (protwitstination?) tools. I can’t see myself deleting my Twitter account any time soon.