Got It!

   

    Guess what?  There IS one thing on my bucket list!  Ha!  I fooled you (although not intentionally).  I have always wanted to live at the beach and, before I die, I would like to make good on that.  

    

      The ocean is a powerful draw for me and always has been. As children, we went on day trips to the California beach often and every summer there was at least one beach camping trip.  My college years were spent close to Santa Cruz and the Monterey area.  I went to the beach all the time.  Sometimes it was to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk or the Monterey/Carmel beaches.  But just as often, I trekked out to the more remote beaches between Santa Cruz and San Francisco.  Those days were always renewing. sometimes adventurous, always enjoyable.  Later I ended up living north of the Golden Gate and still spend plenty of days during all seasons of the year at the beach.

     Maybe twenty years ago, I seriously considered relocating permanently to a beach locale.   In order to be affordable, I would likely need to move to a fairly remote beach area.  Fairly remote means few jobs and that leads to no money for rent and food for the family.  Best to set that idea way over there to the side until kids are launched.

     Fast forward twenty years.  Kids are launched.  I'm still working but I can think about some other options.  Here's the thing.  I like my house.  I like my neighborhood.  I don't really want to deal with buying and selling property and I am not sure I want to be in the beach climate 24/7.  Anyone who knows me knows my thoughts on fog and gray.  

    But, here's the creative part.  Who says "living at the beach" has to mean relocating and living all day every day at the beach?  How about this?  How about if I were to really live at the beach for, say, one month a year?  How about I keep my house in my neighborhood but I go live at the beach for intervals?  Maybe one year I live on a NorCal beach for the month of January (one of the best times to visit NorCal beaches, I might add).  Maybe the next year, I find a place to stay on the big island of Hawaii for the month of February.  Perhaps the next year in March, I try Cape Hatteras in North Carolina.  And the pattern continues:  Gold Beach, Oregon, the Jersey shore, Cape Cod, San Diego, Key West, Florida, Acadia, Maine, you get the idea.

    Do you have a favorite beach?  Give me some words about it, please.

Bucket Lists

    I don't have one.  A bucket list, that is.  You know,  like in that movie The Bucket List?  Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman?  Old guys trying to do the things they want to do before they "kick the bucket"?

    I don't quite get it.  I get lists and sometimes I even make lists but I don't have any check off list of what needs to be accomplished before I fold into the mystic.  That seems so huge and so transient to me.  What I want right now is, in all probability, not going to be what I want in six months or a year, let alone in ten years.  I guess you can make the list and change it a lot but what exactly is the point of the bucket list?  Do you make one because you might forget what it is you want to do?  Or is there some internal satisfaction in checking off the old list.  Just wondering.

   Do you have a bucket list?  Tell me one thing that's on it.  Make it something that doesn't have to do with travel, if you can.