There was a suggestion somewhere that instead of a list of things to do before you die, you write a bucket list for the year, filled with smaller, achievable and joyful things.
I was gearing up for 2024. My Dreamy Moons 2024 journal was on its way from Australia and I was thinking ahead to the reflective writing and planning practices I undertake every year, looking for something new to add to the routine. This seemed perfect.
My journal arrived and there was a double page spread left blank for your ‘vision board’ with the instruction ‘Fill this space with images, quotes, poems and artworks that inspire you’. These pages seemed to call for a collage, but I like my journals to be uniform, serious I guess, and a collage calls for more artistic and compositional talent and comfort with imperfection than I possess. I knew I wouldn’t be engaging with this prompt, so I set these pages aside for my 2024 bucket list instead.
I forget how many items were suggested for the annual bucket list but it was something like fifty. Double digits for sure. Certainly not the nine I ended up with.
As June came to an end, I flipped back to this page. I was horrified that I had only come up with nine items. How unimaginative, do I not envision more for my life than this? It was more horrifying to see that I had only ticked off one: attend a sound bath (and I did not enjoy it).
Seeing Celine Nguyen’s post ‘everything I read in June 2024’ made me think it would be nice to post about everything I have read in 2024 so far, especially as I have recently been reflecting and writing about my practices of documenting the books I buy and read, and this would be another way of documenting.
Turns out, there’s only seven on that list, plus an audiobook.
My inner critic emerges here. As a literature scholar and teacher, that is a shameful amount of reading, it says. Shame.
I’m a CPTSD sufferer, and my particular trauma wounds are shame-based, so this isn’t a healthy moment.
I take a moment and use my IFS practice to come into Self energy and remind myself that I advocate slow living and slow reading. IFS allows me to witness with compassion all that my parts deal with day in, day out, more than my bucket list, or mid-year review or reading list could ever, ever show. Through these lenses, my small, slow lists are to be celebrated.
As for the bucket list, I no longer feel horrified. I spend much of my time researching the tools and skills I’ll need for hand-quilting, and am taking my time to think through how to take up another bulky hobby as a nomad. I’ve booked a music gig, opting for international tickets so I can make a trip of it, something I wouldn’t have expected to be on the cards when I first made this list in January. I don’t think I’ll get to a pottery class this year, and maybe not even to the theatre, and a graduation tattoo depends on whether I can feasibly graduate this year, and a few too many of my bucket list items require money that I just don’t have. However, I feel content to tweak the list, to shelve some of the items for next year.
And despite seemingly achieving only one of my goals, I have actually achieved many bucket-list-worthy things so far this year.
NB: My links are distinguished as follows.
Glossary terms = underlined and italicised.
All other links = underlined only.
Books read in 2024 so far
Please note that the below list contains affiliate links to bookshop.org and I may earn a small commission fee if you buy one of the books in my lists, with no extra cost to you.
Forbidden Notebook - Alba de Cespedes, Pushkin Press
Doreen - Barbara Noble, Persephone Books
Woodworm - Layla Martinez, Harvill Secker
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida - Shehan Katunatilaka, Sort Of books
Heat Wave - Penelope Lively, Penguin Modern Classics
Swimming Home - Deborah Levy, And Other Stories **
Everything Under - Daisy Johnson, Vintage
The Wise Virgins - Leonard Woolf, Persephone Books
The Impatient - Djaili Amadou Amal, audiobook
** my favourite this year
Achievements and highlights
Recovered from spinal surgery in January and can walk for multiple hours rather than 2 minutes
Got back to learning to golf, played a full round, hit three bogeys (bogey = 1 over par)
Submitted a particularly difficult chapter of my PhD which has been the thorn in my side for years
Completed 11 housesits, took care of and gave love to 29 animals
Saw two NTL shows: Vanya and Hamlet
Enjoyed days out at Oxford and Blenheim Palace
Witnessed a woodpecker every day for a fortnight and learned to identify some types of birds
Mid year journal prompts
These are the prompts I have used to reflect privately, and I invite you to use them if they resonate.
Where has my energy been directed so far this year? Is there anywhere it needs to be redirected?
What have I done for myself in these past six months?
How am I feeling, and how does this compare to how I felt in January and how I want to feel by the end of the year?
Substack links in this post:
