Author: Jesús Rivera

A Bucket List of Sorts

There’s a list in my Google Drive; buried somewhere in the plethora of docs and spreadsheets I start but never finish or use. A bucket list, technically, though I hate that framing. Bucket lists for the longest time felt like an acknowledgment of the inevitable end. I’d rather not think about that in my thirties, even if the thought crossed my mind while writing it. It started back when I turned thirty, at the beginning of the COVID pandemic and in my second year of graduate school.

Now I’m thirty-six, and some of those bucket list items I achieved. I got to Japan, taught English there, and that’s it. That’s the only one I crossed off. Which is no small thing. I traveled from Arkansas to Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa, and got to live a dream. I also squandered a fair portion of that dream through my insecurities. And my inability to stop worrying about my dogs from six thousand miles away.

One day, hopefully before I’m forty-five, I’d like to go back to Japan and do it right. Or finally make it to China and give myself the chance I didn’t quite take the first time on the grand adventure overseas. Either place I would love to settle down in, but I know that dream is far, far away.

Right now, I’m aimless again. I say “again” like it’s a recurring character I keep running into at parties. We nod at each other, and neither of us feels thrilled to see the other.

Being aimless isn’t so bad, just annoying. There’s this constant feeling like I should do something, except there’s nothing to do beyond applying for jobs and making sure I eat and sleep so that my body stays satisfied enough to keep on going.

As I look over the list, some of these things I’ll do. Some of them I probably won’t, and I’ve made peace with that, or at least I’ve written “made peace with that”, which might be the same thing as making peace. And yes, I’ve used peace three times in a row, well four now. But I needed something to point at, not a destination exactly, more like a direction. When you can’t answer the question of where you’re going, it helps to at least be able to point in a general direction you’d like to go.

The first one on the list is a motorcycle license. COVID gave my dad and me a lot of ideas. Getting our motorcycle licenses was one of them. We planned on taking classes to help us learn to ride; we talked about trips we could take, and we even went to look at bikes a few times. He kept putting it off, and putting it off, until eventually he decided he was too old for it. The window closed for him. I don’t think he’s wrong about that, but I noticed my desire didn’t leave with him when he walked away.

I almost applied for a license while I lived in Japan back in 2023. There was a moment it felt genuinely possible. I talked to my supervisor at work, who rode himself, and he offered to help me learn. The path was right there. But something felt off. Learning to ride in a country where I didn’t actually know the rules of the road felt less like freedom and more like an accident waiting to happen. So I let it go.

Now I’m in Arkansas, and that feeling has bubbled back up. The idea of long stretches of nothing in particular; there’s something romantic about it. Maybe one day, when I’ve finally worked up the nerve, I’ll find myself darting down one of those roads. Until then, sometime soon, I want to publish a novel.

This one is so close. With my Patreon, I’m actively working toward self-publishing. But I want to have a novel traditionally published too. I’ve held this dream since I was a wee lad, and it has never faded. The downside is I don’t know where to start, and I don’t have the patience for the yes-no-maybe routine of querying. Finding an agent is a tall task by itself, and even that doesn’t guarantee a published book. Call me jaded, perhaps, but with how many resources are at a writer’s fingertips today, self-publishing shouldn’t carry the stigma it does. At least not in academia.

Academia frowns on self-publishing for no real reason beyond gatekeeping, and that barrier feels increasingly out of step with how writing and publishing actually work now.
I love teaching at the college level, but universities and their hiring boards need to reckon with a digital age that cracked open entirely new paths for sharing your work. Those paths deserve more than a dismissive shrug from the people supposed to champion writers. It stops feeling like they care about writing at all when the quickest way to disqualify someone is the absence of a literary journal credit or a traditional publishing deal. The art of storytelling doesn’t change whether you’re crafting a novel or a short story. Only the door to reaching an audience does.

As that door continues to taunt me, I also want to start an animal rescue someday. Probably the biggest pie-in-the-sky item on my list, and yes, I know you’re supposed to keep those attainable. Let me have this one.

My dream is something like what Maya Higa built with Alveus Sanctuary, though not at the same scale or with the same mission. What she created is just inspiring to watch. The focus would be on giving dogs, cats, and farm animals a home after abandonment or abuse, with education running a close second, helping the public understand the part they play in how animals end up needing a home and the responsibilities required to care for them. Without a steady job and a way to fund it, though, this one sits further down the road than a book or a motorcycle.

The last pick from my bucket list just requires discipline. I want to learn Spanish, Japanese, and Mandarin, though not all at once. That would be utterly insane.

Fluency is the goal for Spanish. I’m Puerto Rican; my father speaks Spanish fluently, but never taught my sister or me. I’ve tried over the years, but I’ve discovered I struggle with languages. The gap in knowing the language has bothered me longer than I’ve admitted. I want to get in touch with my dad’s side of the family, and with an island I would love to visit yearly if I’m ever fortunate enough for that kind of trip.

For Japanese and Mandarin, living in Japan or China is something I genuinely want to pursue. Either place is somewhere I can see myself settling into a community, teach English, and actually belong to a place; the latter is something I’ve never truly felt until my brief stint in Japan. In short, if I ever have the opportunity, I intend to stay permanently in either country. The language will become a requirement if that happens. Otherwise, I just want to have a third language in my lexicon!

My bucket list is a little out there, but I see myself living long enough to reach at least one of them. Though if I get the motorcycle first, the timeline on the others gets uncertain. Regardless, if I manage even one before I go, the life I lived was full. I traveled to Japan, spent several years as freaking squire in a jousting troupe, mixed live audio for theatre, and I even fell in love at one point. What more can a boy ask for?

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