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As enamored as I am with the idea of listing and then finally scratching some long-standing itches, a part of this idea feels off. Essentially, I’m figuring out what I’d like to accomplish before I “kick the bucket,” which means I’m definitely going to die.

Not a fan.

I realize the end is inevitable for all things, but I hate even considering it. There’s no scenario in which I’m ready to check out. I believe that one of the reasons I’m a writer is because I desperately want some part of me to live on, even though I’m pretty sure no one’s going to read
Bitter Is the New Black
in a comparative lit class a hundred years from now.

“Class, how does Lancaster present the theme of ‘asshattery’ throughout the text and how does this theme relate to the larger portion of American society in 2001?”

And yet in having written, the possibility exists, which is enough.

When I got home from Savannah, I ran the idea of a bucket list past my lunch buddies and they all thought this was a fine idea. A lot of my friends have been grappling with their own mortality lately, because ours is a tricky age. The freedom that comes with our forties exacts a price.

Throughout the fun of the twenties it’s easy to feel invincible, like life will go on forever, while the thirties are one new beginning after another.

These two decades are chock-full of rites of passage—graduations, professional responsibilities, acquiring furniture that wasn’t Dumpster-dived, china patterns, weddings, babies, white picket fences in neighborhoods no longer stumbling-distance from a bar by design, and minivans.

But in the forties? There are new milestones, and most of them suck. This is when the majority of us begin to deal with aches and pains that won’t go away, with increased professional responsibilities, with the challenges that having elderly relatives bring, and with teenage children who absolutely understand how to work around every parental control on their iPhones. And, P.S., get ready to write a check with many zeroes for their college educations.

Fortunately, the forties often allow the means and wherewithal to occasionally treat oneself, so I fully support every middle-aged man’s sports car purchase. Go ahead and buy that Viper—you’ve earned it, pal. Purchasing a zippy convertible doesn’t necessarily mean your man’s cruising for a bimbo. A lot of times, it’s because he has so little hair left to mess up that driving with the top down no longer matters. And ladies? It’s just fine to love your kids but hate what they did to your rack, so there’s no
time like the present to nip and tuck your way into the figure you want.

Or not.

Because it’s your choice.

I believe how we approach middle age determines the second half of our lives, so I plan to start off right. I intend to make changes and achieve some goals because I want to reframe the
midlife
crisis
,
making it into the
midlife
opportunity
.

As we talked about this over breakfast burritos at Lula Cafe, I realized I’ve specifically chosen the friends in my life because all of them embrace the concept of “what’s next.” Gina’s headed into her second act by starting a holistic skin care line with a product called Kiss My Ash, a venture that’ll succeed based on the name alone. Stacey’s learning how to play tennis and recently bought her first home, which she’ll spend the next two years rehabbing from the studs. Tracey’s just booked her first solo vacation, to explore the Grand Canyon on her own. Joanna recently toured the Holy Land and floated in the Dead Sea with her mother, because neither one of them is ready to stop and stagnate.

Their message is clear: It’s not too late.

No one’s giving up. No one’s done. Sure, the tread on our tires is a little more worn than when brand-new, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get where we want to go. There’s a real danger of hitting this age and just . . . petering out. I always find it disconcerting to walk into people’s houses where literally nothing has changed in thirty years, not the pictures in the frames, not the kinds of groceries in the fridge, not the styles of clothes in their closets, and not the music on their turntables. (Yes, I mean actual record players, and not the cool-hipster kind.)

Of course I’m a fan of tradition, yet I don’t appreciate stasis. Whatever it is that makes people say, “Welp, this is as far as I’m going,” I prefer to avoid; ergo, I’m making my bucket list.

Wait a minute. I just realized
I’ve
been listening to the same
music for thirty years. Perhaps that’s where I should start. Is there life after Wham!’s
Make It Big
? I should probably find out.

Okay, we have our first bucket list item and it’s an easy one! How about I:

Discover an entirely new playlist.

This isn’t 1978 anymore where I had to use a tape recorder to capture the songs I liked when they played on the radio. Technology has made it possible to listen to any piece of music, anytime, anywhere. We’re light-years ahead of when I needed a pencil to spool the tape back into the cassette in order to play R.E.M.’s seminal work on
Document
,
so it’s time to see what else I might like.

(Sidebar: I used to have a huge R.E.M. poster in my bedroom. I’d look at the band members with their crazy unibrows, pasty bodies, and terrible glasses every night and think to myself, “They started this band because they knew it was the only way any of them would ever get laid.”)

Finding a small niche that I dig and then never diverge from is a bad habit I perpetually need to break. I’m the same with music as the spots I visit on the Web. In the morning, I check my news feed, a handful of blogs, and Cute Overload and then I’m done because that’s essentially the entire Internet for me.

Closing myself off to what’s new or different without ever even giving it a chance seems . . . unhealthy and limiting. A plant will never thrive if it’s not systematically refreshed, so I need to fertilize, water, and mix up the soil that is me; ergo, I should:

Find a new hobby.

I don’t know what this might entail, but suspect I’ll find one organically. Preferably, this hobby will occasionally take me outside of the house, because I’m basically two Kleenex-box-slippers away from going all Howard Hughes. Plus, if I had a hobby, I’d have something entirely new to discuss and who knows what kinds of adventures I might stumble into in pursuit?

Okay, this list is starting to flow. If my goal’s to expand what I know and what I do, I definitely want to:

Learn to speak a new language.

There’s something so elegant and continental about being able to converse with people of another culture. One of my favorite stories Fletch tells is one day he and his boss were walking back to the Sears Tower (NEVER the Willis Tower) after lunch and a tourist approached them, asking for directions to Navy Pier in German. They’d spotted the tourist trying to talk to others, but everyone else had shrugged and walked away. It just so happened that Fletch spoke German and his boss/buddy Wes was fluent in Danish, and between the two of them, they easily directed the man where he needed to go. Fletch said his initial thought was, “Good luck finding someone who speaks your language, pal,” immediately followed by, “Hey,
I’m
a guy who speaks your language!”

While I’ve had a number of years of French and I used to be fairly proficient, I discovered that no French person actually wants to hear their gorgeous language coming out of my cheeseburger hole, no matter how much phlegm I incorporate, so trying to recapture what I knew of French would be no fun.

Spanish would be useful, but I fear I’d go all Peggy Hill, rolling my Rs at busboys, and I suspect that would insult all involved.

I’m probably most interested in speaking Italian. I had a semester in college and I absolutely fell in love. When I was little, my grandparents occasionally conversed in Italian and it was magically melodious. Only years later did I realize they were insulting each other and that
“Tua nonna e la puttana del diavolo”
(“your grandmother is the whore of the devil”) and
“Tuo nonno e un asino”
(“your grandfather is a jackass”) aren’t exactly terms of endearment. Yet there’s something appealing about being able to express my displeasure in an entirely new tongue, so you can see my dilemma.

What else would I like to do?

When Fletch and I talked about bucket lists, he suggested a lot of adrenaline-pumping activities, like skydiving or fire-walking or swimming with manta rays, which, no, no, and no. I don’t want to try anything adrenaline-spiked because I’m not one of those folks who have to face death to live life. I don’t care for terror; I find it terrible. I’d rather pursue the useful or the enjoyable. Like, I want to learn a language so that if I ever went to, say, Italy, I could converse.

Hold the phone! I should:

Travel to Italy.

I’ve long suspected that Italy is Disneyland for adults, because there’s so much to see and do (and eat) there. I’d love to visit the Roman Forum and see the Vatican and float down the Grand Canal of Venice in a gondola, then tour the museums in Florence, and see street fashion in Milan. While I’m there, I’d want to sit on a cliff on the Amalfi Coast with a glass of local wine and look out at the water. I’d kill to learn to make pasta properly in Tuscany.

No matter where I were to go in Italy, I’d want to eat dinner alfresco where the waiters are in no hurry because too many pretty girls are walking by. I’d want to sip cappuccino in a little café every day, just soaking up the feel of the country. I’d like to bargain with street vendors. I’d taste new foods and discover new styles. I’d have my picture taken in front of something iconic and historical so we could frame it to start a cool wall of black-and-white photos of the places we’ve been. I’d buy a pair of glasses there because then when people asked where my badass frames came from, I could shrug and say, “Italy,” like, where else would I have gotten them?

Bragging rights aside, I’m half Italian, so more than anything, I’d like to witness where my ancestors came from and try to discover if there’s any part of me that harkens back to my Italian heritage.

In terms of international travel, I’m suddenly game to go everywhere. I’m dying to ride mopeds in Greece. I want to hit Turkey and Morocco if for no reason other than my deep and abiding love of Mediterranean food. (I’ll eat pretty much anything if it’s stuffed inside a date. Fact.) I’d like to see all the neon in Tokyo and find out if the dirty underwear vending machines are actually real, largely so I can stand next to one and cluck in dismay every time some perv looks to make a purchase. I mean, that’s all kinds of wrong . . . unless the sellers are (a) not exploited, and (b) receiving top dollar, in which case I have baskets full of that stuff in my laundry room and I’m happy to ship for a fee. (Plus, my underwear’s big so I feel the creeps would be getting the most yes for their yen.)

I’m dying to shop the flea markets in London after drooling over the Crown Jewels. I wonder, are there many pearl items as part of the Crown Jewel collection and if so, how securely do the Beefeaters guard them? (Asking for a friend.)

Provided I don’t land in a UK prison, I’m beyond curious to see the indoor skiing place in Dubai featured on the Discovery Channel. Come on, a hundred and twenty degrees outside, but snow inside? How could anyone not want to witness this firsthand? How do they keep the place so chilly? I can’t make the upstairs of my house cooler than eighty degrees in the summer.

Speaking of cold, I’d love to spend the night at the Ice Hotel, draped in pelts and drinking shots of vodka to keep warm, although I do have vague concerns about exactly how frigid the toilet seats might be there. I’m not in love with the idea of a bunch of Swedish firemen peeling me off the mug
Christmas Story
style, yet I’d be willing to take that chance.

I’ve always wanted to take a swim wherever it is they snap those screensaver photos—Fiji? Bora Bora? The Maldives?—and sleep in a hotel room that’s more of a hut built on a dock over the
water. After reading
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
, I’m dying to see the sun set in Botswana. I want to visit Indian temples and volunteer at an elephant sanctuary. I want to sample Serrano ham in Spain. I want to pay tribute at Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam and then stroll through a tulip field. And if I went to Paris, I’d like to find out if the French still mock me for my accent.

(My guess is
oui
.)

Joanna and I always talk about auditioning for
The Amazing Race
as a way to see the world
,
but (a) I don’t actually want to run a Siberian obstacle course or eat crickets—unless they’re stuffed in a date—and (b) I’m sure with our navigation skills, we’d be eliminated before we even left Los Angeles.

If we got there at all.

And, because I’m me and in terms of full disclosure, if I could experience any of the above
and
fly international business class
?

Well, that wouldn’t suck either.

But for now, I’d be ecstatic to get a single stamp in my passport, which reminds me:

Get a passport.

The last one I had expired twenty-five years ago, so it’s probably time. What’s funny is last year, I was gathered with the girls for lunch and we were discussing passports.

“How do you not have a passport?” Tracey asked.

“Why would I need one?” I replied.

“What if you want to leave the country for the weekend?” Gina asked.

I said, “Why would I want to leave the country? I don’t even like to leave the house. Frankly, I’m surprised I made it down here for lunch.”

“So, you’ve never thought, ‘We should go to Montreal for the weekend’?” Stacey asks.

“Thus far, in my forty-five years on this earth, no,” I replied. “Hasn’t been an issue.”

Although, once, in the nineties, I had a job interview for an amazing position with a streaming media company headquartered in Canada. I was all set to fly up on their dime to claim my dream job, but the day before I was supposed to go, it occurred to me that I not only didn’t have a passport, but I had no idea where my birth certificate was. I made some calls and found out I wouldn’t have much trouble getting into Canada, but returning to the US might be a problem, so I bailed. But it’s not like streaming media ever became a
thing
, so I’m sure I wouldn’t have even wanted to exercise all those stock options and . . .