Jimmy Buffett and 20 things to do
Thursday, December 20th, 2007Jimmy Buffett speaks to me. Not literally, as in “Hey Mike, just off the East Coast tour and back in the Keys. Why don’t you come down and we’ll have some margaritas”, but metaphorically, through his lyrics. Seriously, I’m almost convinced that he’s talking to me in his songs, urging me to make the most of the time I’ve got on the planet.
In Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes for instance, he sings “yesterday’s over my shoulder, so I can’t look back for too long, there’s just too much to see, waiting in front of me, and I know that I just can’t go wrong.”
In Cowboy in the Jungle, Buffett sings of businessmen on vacation, an alternate approach to life, and throws in a reminder that life is short, “They’re tryin’ to drink all the punches, they all may lose their lunches, tryin’ to cram lost years in five or six days…”, “I don’t want to live on that kind of island, I don’t want to swim in a roped off sea…I gotta be where the wind and the water are free”, and finally, “twenty-four hours, maybe sixty good years, it’s really not that long a stay.” Preach, Jimmy, preach!
In He went to Paris, he sings of an old man’s reflection on his life, saying “After eighty-six years of perpetual motion, if he likes you he’ll smile and say, Jimmy, some of it’s magic and some if it’s tragic, but I had a good life all the way”
Buffett sings of another old man in Last Mango in Paris. Sings of the adventures of this take-life-by-the-bottle-and-drink-it man and his thirst for more:
He said, I ate the last mango in Paris,
I took the last plane out of Saigon,
I took the first fast boat to China,
And Jimmy there’s still so much to be done.
Inspired by Buffett and his characters’ observation’s that life is short and no matter what you have done, there’s still so much to be done, at 40 plus a couple, I’ve put together a list of twenty things to do in the next twenty years. None of them involve third world girls from Buzios or high fashion model wives, but I think it’s a good list. In no particular order my twenty things to do are:
Get a tattoo (or two or three)
Mentor an at risk youth
Get my picture in a bodybuilding magazine
Stay fit and healthy for my wife and kids
Exhibit my photographs
Stay married
Have more sex
Take wifey on a cruise (or to Las Vegas)
Learn Spanish
Learn Latin dancing
Learn to play the guitar
Help my kids buy their first houses
Invent something
Write a book(s)
Learn to sail
Create a scholarship
Be more romantic
Take my kids somewhere amazing
Make a difference
Find beauty in every day
Working toward all that should probably keep me pretty busy for the next twenty years. Certainly doesn’t leave much time for laying around the house watching football games on Sundays. Of course, some of these will be easier to accomplish than others. Assuming I stay married, the have more sex/have a threesome might prove to be the most difficult to pull off! Oh well, I’ll give it the college-try.
How about you? What’s on your list of twenty things to do in the next twenty years?






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