David Campbell: What the hell is a Stuff-It List?
IF you’re feeling the pressure to tick your way through a list of death-defying stunts, David Campbell’s Stuff-It List celebrates the liberation in accepting some things are just never going to happen.
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IT was seeing Tom Cruise jump out of a plane in another extreme stunt to sell a film that brought me to a massive realisation.
To perform this ridiculous feat, Tommy had to make at least five jumps a day to get to more than 100 jumps, so he could make Mission Impossible: Part 157, the blockbuster to end all blockbusters.
I thought, “Wow, five jumps a day. I have never even done one skydive.” Immediately my mind then went to, “Yeah... nah, brah.”
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There was a sense of relief to this. I mean, I am old now.
I have three kids who, when they are on a crazy tirade, make me want to leap from a moving object at 25,000 feet, but I just ain’t gonna.
Don’t you feel that we are constantly being berated by people lecturing us to live our best lives, by making a bucket list to tick off these seemingly impossible tasks? It has to include extreme things so you can say you’ve sucked from the marrow of life. I think it’s time we admitted to ourselves that this is a terrible idea, one that just sets us up for more disappointment. So I am starting a counter-revolution.
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the Stuff-It List.
Think about it. How good does it feel to let things go? To say to yourself, “It’s all right, you are not Tom Cruise. You don’t need to run down the tallest building in Dubai to die happy.”
Let me add some more to get the ball rolling...
University. Never going to happen, people. I never wanted it. I actually hated studying. The thought of going back to feeling inferior in a classroom, just to say at the end “I did it” and throw a square hat in the air, means zero to me. I am uneducated and LOVE it.
OK. This is so much fun. Start your own anti-bucket list. You may want to call it something else. It could rhyme with bucket. It’s up to you.
How about this one I found on an internet bucket list: go zorbing. This activity is on many blogger lists. You remember this? It’s when you get inside a gigantic plastic ball and get pushed down a hill. Does this sound futile and ridiculous? Stuff it! I mean, my kids will have to get therapy because I can’t spin them around more than once without turning green. If I zorbed (is that what you call it?) I would roll about two metres along before getting trapped in a plastic ball of all my expelled breakfast spinning around my head... and you really don’t want to see that on Instagram.
Look, I am not trying to pooh-pooh life. And in many ways, I’m a high-achieving kind of guy. I just think there is something freeing in saying, “You know what? I don’t reckon my life will be better if I learn to code, or ice swim, or build a Dutchtub in my backyard.”
I am looking to spend whatever free time I have left drinking coffee, or napping, or chasing my kids.
As for anything other than those things?
Stuff it.
David co-hosts Today Extra, 9am weekdays, on the Nine Network.