I refuse to see The Bucket List for fear it may reignite my need to make my own bucket list.

By the time one of my roommates finally came and unlocked the door, I had already convinced myself that I was walking a dangerous precipice — dancing on the edge of a wasted life. If I wanted to make the most out of the short time I had on Earth, I needed to get organized. That afternoon I began work on my own list of things to do before I die. Totally missing the point of the book, instead of taking the sample lists as suggestions; I added every experience listed in the book onto my own list.

Visit an active volcano? Of course I needed to do that! Go on a pilgrimage? What list would be complete without?

In the end, I came up with a five-page plagiarized list of activities I needed to do before I died. The items ranged from the simple (tell my parents I love them — checked that off with a five minute phone call) to the slightly more difficult (appear on a light-night television talk show) to the really weird (make a doll that looks like myself).

The book’s suggested experiences came from all over the place. As I read over the list, instead of determination, I was swept up in a wave of despair. How was I possibly going to find the time — let alone the money — to visit all of the places that I needed to in order to make my life complete?

Being the foolhardy guy I am, I fought through my insecurities and the voice of reason that nagged at the back of my head and I dived headfirst into the list. One of the items was to buy a boat. Being a college student on a fixed income, I did not see myself owning a yacht any time soon. Seeking a compromise, I ventured into Toys ‘R’ Us and bought an RC motor boat.

I took it out to the local park and puttered around a lake for about half an hour before I got bored. In the end, I took the boat out again a total of two times before selling it on Craigslist. It didn’t matter if I wasted $50 though — I was living life to the fullest. During the time I kept my list, I did accomplish a lot of worthy tasks.

I performed stand-up comedy in front of a room full of strangers. I stayed up for 24 hours straight. I finally watched all three Godfather movies. In the end, though, I did what I do with most S.P.Ds (Sudden Purposeful Drives) — I lost interest. After a few months, I stopped forcing myself to cross an item off the list every week. Eventually, I stopped looking at the list all together. About a year after I found myself locked out of the apartment and first came across 2 Do Before I Die, I deleted the Excel spreadsheet that contained the list of things to do before I died.

It’s not that I’ve resumed the carefree theory of perpetual immortality that I seemed to have possessed well into my young adulthood — if anything, I’m even more aware of the fact that Death has me on speed dial. Instead, I came to the conclusion that a life spent planning is a life unlived. I still have a list of things I want to do before I die. Instead of cataloging and chronicling that list in alphabetical order, though, I keep it in my head — remembering and forgetting goals every day.

While I’ve come to accept the fact that I won’t be able to do everything I want to in my life, I’m going to try my best to do as much of it as possible. I’m going to see as many places, swim with as many dolphins and live as much as I can.

The time I spent obsessing over my list was the only time I truly wasted my life. Instead of typing up five pages of goals, I could have been making a doll that looked like me.

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The book that single handily made me question the very worth of my life.

In college, we all go through fazes. For many people, going away to university is the first time spent apart from their family. This newfound freedom is the perfect atmosphere for trying something new and adopting a fresh persona — whether it be social, sexual or theological. Always a bit of a glutton, I went through several fazes — including a brief stint of time where I dwelt endlessly on my own mortality.

During the months between my sophomore and junior year, I spent my first summer at Texas A&M instead of going home to live with my parents. Because my sister had an internship in Houston and I lived in an apartment with three other guys who had cars, my sister kept the car we shared that summer. While I could often depend on my roommates for rides to and from campus, there were many days where I would have to walk home from school. Worse, because I did not need my keys to drive to school, I would often forget them when I left the apartment in the morning.

One afternoon, I finished up early at school and decided to walk home instead of waiting for the bus. The good news was that my apartment was not too far away from campus. The bad news: I live in Texas where summer afternoons can leave a man drenched in sweat in under 10 minutes. By the time I got to my apartment, I was soaked and ready for a nice cool shower and an afternoon nap.

Walking up to my porch, I shoved my hands into my pockets to fish out my keys. I pulled back empty handed. Not only had I forgotten my keys, I had also forgotten my cell phone. I was stuck outside and there was no way for me to call for help.

I spent the first hour sitting in the shade and attempting to cool off. Parched from the walk, I even resorted to drinking from the waterspout — something my parents had always told me would give me worms.

The second hour was when I started to get bored.

I have a lot of experience in dealing with being locked out. When I was in grade school, I had a bad habit of forgetting my keys. It was after my mom came home to find me peeing on the side of the house that she began hiding keys in the front patio. Even with my past experience, I struggled with ways to keep sane as I paced back and forth in front of the apartment and tried to will the front door open. Unable to develop telekinesis, I resigned myself to find other ways to be kept amused.

I searched in my backpack for something to do — anything that would take my mind off of my situation. While I suppose I could have cracked open a book and started studying for one of my summer courses, I quite frankly wasn’t in the mood. Instead, I took out a book that had been sent to the newspaper to be reviewed. The book was called “2Do Before I Die” and was, as you might suspect, a helpful guide in making a list of things to do before you shuffled off the mortal coil

As I flipped through the book and read some of the suggestions for experiences nobody should pass up while they still had the breath in them, I realized that my life had, so far, been relatively uneventful.

Sure I had been places and seen things, but had I ever swam with dolphins? Had I ever pet a dolphin for that matter? What if was to die today, trapped outside my apartment and left to the elements? Would I see my life flash before my eyes and merely yawn?

To be continued…

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It takes a true friend to attack somebody with a stun gun.

Luckily, I have such a friend.

One afternoon while sitting in the Texas A&M student newspaper office. I happened to mention a list of things I would like to do before I die. Somewhere between being a guest host of Saturday Night Live and wrestling with a grizzly bear, I mentioned the fact that some sick and twisted part of me actually wanted to know what it felt like to be Tased.

To be Tased seemed like some new and interesting life experience that would define the rest of my life. At the very least, I could perhaps discover I had some heretofore-unknown immunity to surges of electricity and I would be free to embark on a life of crime.

As the weeks passed, word got around the newsroom that I was curious about being Tased. People would stop and ask me if I was serious. Had I had my psychological check-up lately?

During an opinion desk meeting, the editor brought my name up when one of his writers proposed a column about Tasers. As luck would have it, Jay, one of the opinion writers, happened to have a stun gun sitting in his car. To this day, I’m not sure why Jay owned a stun gun, but it did not matter. In no time, events had been set in motion that would finally make my wish come true.

It wasn’t until I was standing outside, looking at the stun gun, that I began to rethink my idea of excitement. Maybe swimming with dolphins would be more my speed. Sure I had never experienced being shocked by a stun gun, but I had also never free-fallen from a skyscraper. Maybe these were good things.

I had taken my shoes off (for some reason I’m still not sure of), removed any items of metal from my pocket (I wasn’t going to take any chances with electricity) and was beginning to brace myself for what I imagined would be a near-death experience.

I tend to have a very vivid imagination.

People tried to talk me out of it. I tried to talk myself out of it. I jumped around like a spaz trying to psyche myself up. For a while it seemed like I was going to chicken out and, in the process, disappoint the large crowd that had gathered around Jay and myself. Fortunately, Jay was a true friend and went through with it, whether I wanted him to or not.

After 10 minutes of nervously leaping from foot to foot, he simply reached out and glanced my side with the stun gun, shocking me for just a fraction of a second.

I don’t remember too much about the actual pain, albeit that it felt similar to a bee’s sting — if the bee had a semi-automatic stinger. As soon as the stun gun hit my leg, I fell away from it, falling toward the ground.

I bounced up soon afterward in no immediate pain.

A few hours later, though, my nervous system was telling a different story. With my leg sore and my head throbbing, I decided that a life of crime isn’t for me as long as stun guns and Tasers are hiding in the purses of women (and cars of men) nationwide.

Read more tales of my college life