What’s on Your F-It List?

Jerry Seinfeld was having none of it. At the New Jersey Performing Arts Center on Friday night, he told a packed audience that at 61, he no longer has a bucket list. Rather, he has “replaced the b with an f.”

These days, when people ask him to do things he doesn’t want to do, he adds it to his list. He anticipates that when he’s in his 70’s, he’ll just shake his head and walk away.

When you’ve had cancer, you don’t have to wait until your sixties to create your own, uh, F-it List. I started mine at 40 when I said F-it to writing Christmas cards. I was bald, tired, and anxiously waiting to find out if I was in remission or if I’d be spending a month in the hospital having a bone marrow transplant.

Happy holidays!

So F-it, Christmas cards, and I haven’t written any since. During my eight years of remission, I’ve added more things to my F-It List:

• When guests are coming over, I clean only the part of the house where I will entertain them. If they should wander off to check out my office or look for the cat, they have left the pre-approved area and must deal with the pile of clothes on the floor in the upstairs hallway and the science project of an iced tea festering on the end table by the piano.
• I wait a few windy days before deciding if the leaves really need the leaf-blower to get them off the driveway and yard or if Mother Nature did enough of a half-assed job to let it be.
• I fast-forward through commercials on my Tivo and I don’t listen to commercial radio.
• For school fundraisers, I just send in a check and throw out the glossy brochure of cheesecakes I’ll never eat.
• I use parking garages rather than troll for spots on the street because life is short, the show starts soon, and I have to go to the bathroom.
• I let the storm wash fair-weather friends out to sea.
• I gave away all those bridesmaid’s dresses the bride swore I’d wear again.
• I use a fresh teabag. Every time.
• I treat myself. And my kids.
• Every week, I walk 30 minutes across Manhattan rather than take a cab or crosstown bus, because that city–the one that saved my life–is worth the close-up look and listen. And I stop to take pictures along the way.

How about you? What’s on your F-it List?