The Life List: The Difference Between Doing Something and Doing Nothing Is Everything

by Anderson, Chrissy

• ISBN13: 9781458202284
• ISBN10: 1458202283
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-03-12
• Publisher: Abbott Pr

Summary

When she was just sixteen, Chrissy Anderson made a life list: 1) Graduate college in four years with a degree in business. 2) Get a job in the fashion industry where I can travel and boss people around. 3) Buy my first house when I'm twenty-three. 4) Marry Kurt when I'm twenty-five. 5) Move into a BIGGER house when I'm twenty-seven. 6) Have first baby when I'm twenty-eight. I want a boy first and a girl second! 7) I want my kids to be two years apart so they can be best friends forever. At twenty-eight, she's been steadily checking off the boxes (as she mocks the style and life choices of everyone around her). Now married to Kurt, the man of her dreams, she's got it all-or so everyone thinks. Chrissy's trendy life in suburban Northern California begins to run amuck when she meets the much younger Leo, an unexpected man who makes her question just how perfect her "perfect life" really is. With the help of her brassy, no-nonsense therapist, Dr. Maria, Chrissy learns more about herself than she anticipates. When the untimely death of her best friend catapults her into an overdue reality check, Chrissy scrambles to correct the mistakes of her past. In order to make everything right again, will she have to end things with Kurt or Leo ... or both?

Excerpts

February, 2001-Unload When I was sixteen, I made a life list that looked like this: 1.    Graduate college in 4 years, major in business. (cuz no one thinks I can) 2.    Get a job in the fashion where I can travel and boss people around.  I love the GAP! 3.    Buy first house with Kurt when i'm 23.  (don’t move in til we’re married though!  Tee hee!) 4.    Marry Kurt when I’m 25!!  I want to get married on the beach! 5.    Move into a big giant house when I’m 27.  I hope it's in Danville!!!!!!!! 6.    Have first baby when I’m 28.  I want a boy first and a girl second! 7.    I want my kids to be two years apart.  They have to be best friends forever! And being the control freak that I am, I stuck to the list. Even as a grown ass woman I chased after stuff written in purple ink, on college rule binder paper and folded into a fancy little triangle.  It never occurred to me that all of my satisfaction came from crossing things off the list, not what I was accomplishing!  Sticking to the damn list explains why my life was so empty once I had everything I thought I ever wanted and it also explains the total mental breakdown that led me to a therapist’s office three years ago.  One of my best friends has been stopped by cancer, something totally out of her control, but I was my own disease.   My last appointment with my therapist is set for a week after I return from Mexico.  Sure I’ll struggle with life after therapy, but who doesn’t?  There’s not one thirty something year old woman out there that doesn’t struggle with men, marriage, wrinkles, cellulite and money. It’s time to grieve the loss of my best friend and the greatest love (and sex) of my life on my own.     Girls, it’s time to meet CHRISSY ANDERSON.  It took a chance encounter with a young stranger at a bar to realize her life list was bullshit.  But does she have the courage to correct the mistakes of her past?  Is she strong enough to defy the wishes of everyone around her and become the woman she was meant to be? Chrissy's made some big mistakes, learned from them and came out the other end in a pretty damn good place...and she wrote all about it.