Write Your Crazy Wish List! ***

What crazy wishes do you have? I think that’s a little different from a bucket list. On a bucket list, you actually think that you might be able to do everything on it, right? You just need to get up the nerve, find the money, the time, etc.  But on a crazy wish list, there might be things you know you can’t do. Or will never do, for one reason or another.

So what’s the point of a crazy wish list?

Well, it’s to remind yourself that you have a vivid imagination that you’re ignoring 99% of the time. Yes, even we writers do that. We might imagine stories for our characters, but we stop imagining things for ourselves.

Now you’re probably asking: why should we bother remembering we have imaginations? We have bills to pay, for gosh sakes! And kids with issues, and job challenges and a host of other substantive realities with which we must deal. Sheesh!

We need to remember that we have imaginations because they buffer us against the slings and arrows, and they bring us joy–two very important functions. Plus, there’s another big thing our imaginations do for us, and you’ll find out at the end of the article what I’m talking about. This exercise leads up to it. So let’s get started!

I recommend you update your crazy wish list all the time! As in, get a white board, put it in the kitchen, and let it be a family crazy wish list! Read each other’s! Draw weird pictures around them. Laugh about them. And then, maybe…go after one of those crazy wishes! Or you can hide your own personal crazy wish list in a box and bury it in the garden and dig it up every once in a while to update it. Add a candy bar so that every time you open the box, you get a special surprise! Anything goes when it comes to your crazy wish list! You can even make a crazy wish list about how to do your crazy wish list!

If for some reason, you won’t do this, please at least encourage the kids in your life to try it. They won’t stop writing, I promise you. They can have as many crazy wishes as they want!

Here’s my crazy wish list for today. Don’t hold me to them–they might change tomorrow:

1) I want to be Captain Kirk’s woman in a Star Trek episode. They’d put that soft lens on me when the camera focuses on my face, and my hair would be woven in a beehive basket design, just like Nurse Chapel’s.

2) I wish Billy Joel were one of my best friends and he’d come over tonight for a big jam session. My sisters and I would sing harmony over his shoulder while he’s playing “Until the Night,” a very sexy song of his that hardly anyone knows!

3) I’d love to win a Rita! Or at least be nominated for one again!  Or is it the book that wins? And is nominated? I get confused about that, but either way, I’d be psyched!

4) I’d love for one of my books to hit the New York Times list. I mean literally. I’d like to throw it and watch it bounce off the newspaper. NOT.  (I’m the worst joke teller!). No, it would be really awesome to be on that list. But until I make it, I’m going to keep throwing my current books at it every Sunday.

5) I want one of my books made into a movie, and I’d be on set with all the stars, and we’d be best friends and go karaoking every night. Hopefully, George Clooney would be there, and I’d prank him really badly. He’s a master at pranking people, and I would catch him by surprise. He’d respect me so much, he’d ask me to marry him, and I’d have to tell him, “Sorry. I love my husband.” And then he’d give me his house on Lake Como in Italy just because he’s pining away for me so badly.

George’s House on Lake Como–I’m in the window, waving!

6) I wish all the homeless dogs and cats of the world would have people who loved them and took care of them.

7) I dearly wish every child would be cherished and well fed, and that when they shut their eyes at night, they felt safe and happy.

8) I wish cancer were cured.

9) I wish I could fly.

10) I wish I lived in a castle in Cornwall with my same family and pets and that I were a duchess who drove an emerald green Jaguar convertible and ate scones with clotted cream and gooseberry jam every day. What is a gooseberry? I have no idea. But it’s on my crazy wish list because it sounds so delightful and cozy, like something out of The Secret Garden. I can just hear Glinda the Good Witch saying this wish out loud in her tinkly-bell voice….

My castle in Cornwall–it’s vacant right now as I’m chillin’ on Lake Como.

So do you have the idea? Just writing down my crazy wishes has made me feel happier somehow. It buffers me against the hard times. It gives me a spark of joy. A lot of that joy comes from admitting what I want to do. When we were little, we weren’t afraid to tell the whole world what we wanted to do, were we? We could dream!

And now for that bonus thing our imagination does for us. It seems almost like a selfish, ridiculous thing for a responsible, hard-working adult to make a crazy wish list, but ironically, our imaginations, given free rein, always brings us back to community. We can’t help ourselves. We think about other people even when we’ve been given “permission” to indulge ourselves. That’s the magic of the crazy wish list. It reminds us that there are things that we need to work on–really big things that need solving on a global scale or smaller, more personal things in our own lives, our own circles. And if we get too caught up in our little routines, we can forget those things. I know I can’t cure cancer, but I can do my best to avoid the triggers. And I can pray for people I know who have it. I can maybe even go to the hospital and visit strangers who are sick with cancer. The crazy wish list reminds me that I’m alive, part of a big, wonderful world. It infuses me with the power that comes with recognizing this miraculous connection. I’m way bigger than any boring old to-do list!!! There is potential in me that I have yet to tap. There is good I have yet to do. 

Wonder Woman, watch out!

Thanks for reading my crazy wish list, and if anyone wants to share, I’d love to read yours!

*** Feel free to call it your “CWL,” as in, “Hey! have you written your CWL yet?” That’s what the really self-important among us call it to make ourselves look smart and special. It’s like the TPS report of OFFICE SPACE fame.

Hi, I’m Kieran. My family loves music and anything that makes us laugh out loud. Along with Chuck, my husband of 24 years, I try to teach our kids that we have to actively choose happiness–and if I accomplish nothing else as a mom but pass that one lesson along to them, then I think I’ve done my job. My oldest guy, Nighthawk, was diagnosed in kindergarten with Asperger’s syndrome, and now he’s a senior in college; his sister Indie Girl, who’s younger by 16 months, is a college junior; and my youngest, Dragon, is in tenth grade. For our family, it’s about managing your weaknesses and wringing everything you can get out of your strengths. And along the way, finding joy. www.kierankramerbooks.com