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Writer's pictureJenny Wynter

Wild Expectations: Writing and Living the Bucket List

“Nobody succeeds beyond his or her wildest expectations unless he or she begins with some wild expectations.” Ralph Charell.

I had some terribly wild expectations of this crazy little life.

To win an Oscar by 18.

To marry Johnny Depp by 23.

To be loved by everybody in the entire universe.

You know, realistic.

But then there are the expectations – or as I’d rather put it, the hopes – that I have that are indeed wild, but are actually within the realm of possibility.

Like living in Nepal for a year. Starting up an artistic retreat centre. Running an absolutely kick-ass improv company.

A year or so ago, hubby and I went and saw “The Bucket List”. While it was a pretty unremarkable film all-in-all, I cannot deny it this: it inspired both me and the hubbster to return home, sit down and put pen to paper (in other words, the dream ending to a hot date, no?) and write our very own Bucket Lists i.e. a scrawling of things you wish to do before you kick the bucket.

We stuck them in prime position on our kitchen cupboards – poor little under-cleaned things that they are – so we could see them every single day, staring us in the face, daring us to take action! And you know what? The crazy thing is that in that first few months of having them right there under our noses, we actually began to tick them off.

Get a dog? Done. (There is a whole sad saga behind this however, which I shall leave for another time…)

Have another baby? Done.

Live at the beach? Got it covered, baby!

It is only now, one year and a half after that initial post-cinematic inspiration rush, that I find myself about to tick off yet another item on that list.

You see, dear peeps, come mid-July – only two weeks away (SQUEEE!) I am going to be heading to the fabulousness known to the world as New York City (I refer to it however, as my ‘other lover’) to take part in an incredible retreat in improvisation. AGH. This merits an entire series of posts in and of itself, which shall indeed follow as I blog and videoblog my little heart out during the entirety of the trip. However, we are talking about bucket lists so let’s talk about bucket lists. Stop getting distracted! You!

As soon as I had decided once and for all to just bite the bullet and go, I emailed my best friend Frankie, now with four kids herself and living in the UK, with a message that went something like this:

“I AM GOING TO NEW YORK AND SO ARE YOU!! YOU MUST! IT’S ON MY BUCKET LIST!!!!!”

To cut a long story short:

a) she didn’t need a great deal of convincing;

b) her wonderful hubby agreed to step up with the needed child stuff to make it happen; and so it is that

c) in less than two weeks the two of us are going to be spending an entire long weekend in NEW YORK CITY!

AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m now at the point where I’m needing to re-write my bucket list to get some new stuff on there. And seeing how well this is working thus far, I’m thinking that Johnny Depp may have to enter on there after all. Wild? Mmm-hmm!

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