To Eulogy or Not To Eulogy

Considering the positive response over at NAF, I should blog about my humorous fictional death more often. Funny is more fun to read than whiny.

Technically, I didn't fulfill my assignment. Stephen Covey wants me to write a life mission statement and he suggested starting with a eulogy. What would I want people to say about me after I've taken The Long Step?

It's not an easy assignment, mostly because it requires me to project 60 years into the future and ask "what would I do?"

It would be simple to make stuff up (hence the NAF post), but if this exercise is a prelude to a personal mission statement then I could conceivably be expected to begin doing things that would result in the stuff mentioned in the eulogy. I'm pretty sure that's the point of the exercise.

So it's all well and good to mention I used a portion of my book profits to start Heaven's Cat House, a not-for-profit cat adoption agency, but how on earth would I do that? Well, I'd have to actually make a profit on a book, so it's possible I'm getting way ahead of myself, but if I did, then what? Is that what this goal of reading business/marketing books is for?

This is the kind of pressure I tried to escape by just "killing" myself early. Then I can leave unfinished stuff and not worry about it.

Plus, my fear is even 60 years in the future the best thing someone can say about me is "she was a great Farmville neighbor." I've been assured, however, Farmville won't last that long. That's a thought to make me weep into my oatmeal.

But, to end on a funnier note, the "bike into a parked bus" incident is real. I was in my early 20's and the last bike I'd ridden braked when you back-peddled. Didn't help a bit as I rolled down a hill toward a bus. By the time I figured out the brakes were on the handlebars, all I did was practice some of those Newtonian physics by propelling my unbraked self forward into the bus. I limped away from that particular humiliation (under the wide-eyed stares of the 200 camp youths I was counseling) with two severely jammed fingers, a knot the size of an apple on my thigh, a wrenched back and a lump on the back of my head where I hit the pavement after bouncing off the bus.

Okay, maybe that's only funny if you're really sick. I have to admit, had I been watching, I would have  laughed until I wet myself. Feel free to chuckle away. I won't tell.