I don\u2019t particularly have a \u201cbucket list.\u201d I have a few things in life I still want to experience, but don\u2019t really keep them written down.<\/p>\n
If I did have a list like that, I don\u2019t know whether I would have ever thought to add \u201cexperience a Like a lot of other people, I really didn\u2019t know what to make of last week\u2019s tremor. I had my headphones on as I plowed through work at my desk in Baltimore. After someone closed a drawer a few desks away, I noticed the empty Snapple bottle on my desk moving.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy did she slam that drawer?\u201d I thought. \u201cIt didn\u2019t seem that forceful.\u201d<\/p>\n Then I noticed the bottle still trembling a few seconds later. Then I thought I saw something else moving. Then I wondered if something was wrong with me.<\/p>\n A lot of people I have talked to had that same thought pattern. In the back of my head, I was thinking earthquake, but the front was telling me those sort of things don\u2019t happen around here.\u00a0\u00a0I sat still briefly to make sure I wasn\u2019t having some sort of episode then went to make sure I wasn\u2019t going crazy.<\/p>\n \u00a0One of the most fascinating things about last Tuesday\u2019s events is how many thoughts can go through your head in just a few seconds.\u00a0\u00a0I can\u2019t remember everything I considered, but I do know I ping-ponged back and forth between every possible emotion.<\/p>\n When you are five floors up in a building that you honestly think could come down thanks to a heavy sneeze at any moment, those kinds of things happen. The place is not dilapidated by any means. You just to tend to focus on the negatives when the building starts to sway.<\/p>\n That\u2019s what bugged me most about the people I saw online criticizing the way people reacted to the earthquake. Just because no one died and damage was thankfully minimal does not mean that it didn\u2019t make most of us wish we had a second pair of underwear handy.<\/p>\n When something significant happens \u2013 and this was the most powerful quake in this region in a century so I consider that significant \u2013 survival does not turn into a contest. Just because someone else had a worse event and survived does not make them a better person.<\/p>\n On the flip side, because no one died and damage was thankfully minimal, I believe people had every right to turn social networking sites into an open mic night. As I stood in a parking lot with co-workers waiting to see if (and when) we could get back into our building, the quips I found on Twitter made the whole experience more fun.<\/p>\n So maybe I should check \u201cfind the humor in a non-fatal natural disaster\u201d off my imaginary bucket list. Having a few laughs is way more important than pretty much anything else in my book even if I have to endure a little shaking in the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don\u2019t particularly have a \u201cbucket list.\u201d I have a few things in life I still want to experience, but don\u2019t really keep them written down. If I did have a list like that, I don\u2019t know whether I would…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","wpcat-3-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1491"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1493,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions\/1493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}hurricane<\/del>\u00a0earthquake on the fifth floor of a building\u201d before the fact.<\/p>\n