My Bucket List

My Bucket List

What drives someone to seek a life without addiction and regret? In this solo reflection, poet and storyteller Jim Hirtle takes you through a bucket list that didn’t turn out quite the way he expected. Instead of chasing future thrills, Jim starts by looking at what he’s already lived through.

You’ll hear about an "incredible family" that still hugs and cries together, living across the Great Northwest, the South Pacific, the East Coast and Texas, fishing for rainbow trout on the Russian River and leaving footprints on Hawaii’s North Shore and Alaska’s frozen tundra. He talks openly about being called a hippie with hair past his shoulders, then a US Marine; dropping acid and picking up hitchhikers; running marathons and later crawling across a cold floor in pain.

There’s cancer, chemo, remission and recurrence, and the raw gratitude of still being alive. There’s addiction and sin, but also the sense of being "unhooked" from both. Jim weaves in light humour — eating at the Ritz-Carlton and Taco Bell on the same day, fluctuating waist sizes that he jokes deserve applause, and watching every episode of Seinfeld at least five times. He balances this with tender moments: being present for his children’s first breaths and his father’s last.

After listing books written, poetry published, music loved and sport celebrated, he admits, "You know, I’ve done everything I wanted to do. Almost." That "almost" is the heart of the episode. He shares that his bucket list ended up with just one item: "Tell you." Jim then lays out, in simple, direct language, his faith in Jesus, the weight of sin, and his belief that Christ "unhooked us from sin" and paid the cost in full.

For anyone interested in addiction, survival and faith intertwined with honest storytelling, this reflection might prompt a bigger question: what would be the one thing on your own bucket list?