I have an odd habit of incessantly updating the proverbial three givens in life. Two weeks ago I believed the three givens were death, taxes, and that brown sugar will harden into adobe within six days of buying.

Last week I updated the three givens to death, taxes, and while gazing at the night sky someone will imperiously point out the Big Dipper like they’re Edwin Hubble showing us never-seen-before nebula.

This week I’ve updated my list to death, taxes, and uttering at least once a week, after crossing the latest age-related threshold, “Where does the time go?”

This bears especially true while trying to recognize the face peering back at us in the mirror. The more wrinkles we see, the more time conscious we become. “Seize the day” elevates from flippant advice to an unrelenting mandate, adding more pressure to making better use of our days.

I feel it. So much so I once considered taking a speed-reading class for the purpose of viewing foreign subtitled films in fast forward. But the idea of watching Das Boot in less than 12 minutes struck me as unfulfilling, on par with touring Venice’s Grand Canal on a jet ski.

When I noted my growing awareness to the ticking of time to Jan, my neighbor who shares my age, she suggested composing a bucket list. Not surprising, since she’s big on lists. She’s the type of person who will write “close the garage door” or “brush teeth” on her daily To-Do list so as to delude herself into believing she’s getting things done.

I’m the opposite. I’m not a fan of lists. More often than not they feel like mental tyranny, the Home Owners Association of the mind, robbing life of impulse and spontaneity, emphasizing doing rather than experiencing.

Plus, some of life’s greatest achievers — Gandhi, Van Gogh, Einstein — did not have bucket lists, and yet they lived busy and fulfilling lives. Even if they did consider the idea, I can’t imagine Einstein, for instance, having anything more on his bucket list than owning a comb.

Regardless, as a concession to Jan, I agreed to author a list but with a twist. Instead of a bucket list, I made a non-bucket list. Instead of things I want to do, it’s a list of things I no longer want to do. Same idea in bringing sharper focus to our use of time, but from a different angle:

1) I will stop giving wasabi another try. It’s not a food; it’s a mucous laxative.

2) I will never watch another Hallmark Channel holiday movie again, when I know every movie, regardless of cast, revolves around the same premise: Single mother of one becomes snowbound in a small New England town and finds love.

3) I will surrender a lifelong quest to climb Mount Everest. The idea of desperately clinging to a frozen rock face in 40-below temperatures at 29,000 feet has lost its appeal. Especially when considering most other people at 29,000 feet are at cruising altitude on a commercial flight, snacking on peanuts while paging through Sky-Mall magazine and searching for travel pillows.

4) I will never again attend a killer whale show at Sea World. Instead of mammals at the top of the food chain, they resemble pandas in wet suits.

5) I will stop harboring championship hopes for the Buffalo Bills, my favorite football team. Rooting for them is like rooting for the cast of Gilligan’s Island. Big expectations are always met with inevitable disappointment.

6) I will never go parasailing again. I did it once while vacationing in the Florida Keys. While bobbing in the Gulf of Mexico waiting for flight, I urged the guide to start the speed boat due to my inordinate fear of sharks. He eased my paranoia by saying, “Don’t worry. More people die annually from lightning strikes than they do from shark attacks.” Two minutes later I was floating in the sky like Ben Franklin’s key on a kite.

I stopped after only six items. The Florida Keys reference made me think of Hemingway and how it was said that while Hemingway wrote, all the lesser writers of his time talked about writing. This same sentiment applies to life. Instead of talking about how to live, or how to use our time, we should just live.

All of which led to me updating the three givens in life to death, taxes, and the use of Hemingway references to support a point.