I saw someone Tweet about bucket lists the other day and I haven’t stopped thinking about them since.

(And now I can’t find the Tweet either to credit them, so that’s cool… if anyone knows who the PF blogger talking about bucket lists was, holler at me yo.)

Bucket lists have been on my mind a little because I actually have a stage management bucket list that only has two items left on it:

• Stage Manage Bat Boy: The Musical
• Work for Cirque du Soleil

This is crazy to me because I developed my stage management bucket list pretty early on it included a wide variety of disciplines, certain types of tours, and even a specific Off-Broadway show – and I’ve knocked every one of them off the list.

I think it’s been on my mind so much because I’m genuinely considering transitioning away from this career as I search for what I’d like to do after the end of the summer.

…which is a fairly presumptuous position to even take, as I’m assuming I’ll just be able to find work then and I won’t have to just take whatever comes my way – which could legitimately be how that transition works out.

But for now, we dream big.

I’m also trying to figure out how upset I’ll be if I don’t do those things. And why? Am I upset because I can’t check off the last two things and so that career path just feels incomplete?

Or do I really want to do them?

To be fair, I feel like I could make my way back to Bat Boy someday. Like, maybe I’ll produce that thing myself in a little community theater. Cirque feels like a now or never attempt though and I do think it still matters to me.

Bucket lists can be kind of funny things like that. I have one I wrote for my life at around 14, that I added to a little over the years, but a lot of things on it just don’t matter to me anymore.

And a few things make me wonder what the heck 14 year old Mel was thinking.

Learn how a watch works? Really?

And there are other things that still sound ok, but adult Mel realizes they’re not as much of a given as 14 year old Mel thought (though I do give her credit for also not wanting to birth a child).

 Get married. Adopt a kid. Easier written than done.

I mean, do bucket lists even really matter? I’ve worried in the past that bucket lists were just synonymous with to-do lists. Collect the checkmarks without really living the experience.

It’s funny (not in a ha-ha way) how doors just seem to close left and right in your 30s, because I have a strong feeling that moving away from stage management now feels very permanent. In no small part because of the stress and crazy schedule – I feel like once I break the cycle, I won’t be like “please let me back into this ridiculous world.”

It’s a little like both times I’ve left the circus. The first few years after Ringling, I thought there was no way I’d ever go back to a circus. Circus people are the hardest working I’ve ever met. The job is just insane. But who really wants to live like that?

And yet, I did go back.

So maybe I’m freaking out about nothing and life is long and maybe I’ll manage to complete that stage management bucket list somewhere along the way.

I just feel like I’ve spent a lot of life like the ball in pong, just bopping along from paddle to paddle without much of a concrete plan. I’m not sure it’s feasible to do all of life like that – but maybe it is.