Life List

1. Friends – I want to have a group of friends that are strong and true. I want a group of friends that we can get together and do things with, a gang, a quick-witted-sitcom-worthy group that is the base of my socializing. I want a group of friends that come to my house and we cook in the kitchen, the wine flows and music booms beneath cries of laughter and good ribbing of each other. I want a group of friends that discuss possibilities, and comfort definites, understand change, and encourage growth, while standing true and strong. I not only want these friends, I want to be this friend. I want a best friend that I love best and she loves me best, we are confidantes and support, we are a source of fun for the other and a kick in the butt when needed.

2. My One True Love – I want to find my life partner, my helper-mate, my best friend, confidante, encouragement and support. I don’t expect perfection, or even believe in it for that matter, but I want someone committed to making it work, someone that loves me enough, someone that I can fall in love with, someone that is careful with my broken, fragile heart pieces and can put them back together. I want someone that excites me, my head, my body, my life, but can be that center for my chaos of a life, someone that I can ground to. They say you know it when it happens, but I am walking proof that you don’t. I thought I found this, but he negated all the above by leaving.

3. Meaningful, Gainful Employment – I am an idealist, a naturalist. I believe that the hard work of just one person can change the dominant paradigm. I want so much to find a place where I can make a difference, where my contribution can bring us one minute closer to preserving the world and its function around us.

4. Health – I want to be healthy, to have a strong body and a stable mind. I want to accept my healthy body and mind, wholly. I want these things for my family and friends too.

5. Discovery – I want to travel the world. I want to see the big places and delight in the known places. I want to live in Europe and I want to love in the South, I want to roar through South America like Che’ and find peace in the East. I want to climb the mountains with names I can’t pronounce that the natives hold sacred, swim the rivers of my nation's blood, visit my Canadian neighbors, and seaplane all over Alaska.

6. Spirit – I want to find a peace within myself and with myself. I need to learn to embrace the stillness, not rebel against it and try to fill it. I need to learn to accept the pain, experience it without fear of losing myself in it. I want to learn grace. I need to finds a spiritual part of me to ground to, to pull strength from without the concern of religious branding or association. I need to learn to live with the religion I was raised in without the alternating apathy and hostility I feel towards it. I need to find self within spirit and the spirit within myself.

7. Money – I need to earn it and use it. I want to live debt free.

8. People – I need to learn to associate with people better. I need to be able to small talk with strangers and be warm with those I do not know or do not like.

9. Lifestyle – I want to live a sustainable life, making decisions that will not negatively impact those around me. I want to really learn another language, and then actually use it. I want to be a runner (5K nonstop), a swimmer, a gardener, and a writer. I want to drive a Vespa, ride bikes, create, and play my horn again. I want to do things because I like them, not because I have to keep working on it to be the best. I want to balance dedication and practice with love and enjoyment. I want to reconnect with my creative side, learn to write in times that aren’t dark and miserable, but happy times too, or mundane times. I want to gossip less, judge less, and speak the truth more.

10. Home – I want to own a home. I want to own a home where every room speaks of my touch, a home with warm wood floors, white walls and bold, colorful artwork. I want a home with chair rails and hook boards, baths to sink into, a cat asleep in the window, a boy playing catch with his little friend in the yard, a kitchen to chat in and beds inviting people to pile in. I want a home that my friends visit regularly and family loves. I want a home that houses my books, my thoughts, my loves and my loved ones. I want to work on that home, myself. I want to redo the floors, renovate the design, restore the splendor and make it, wholly, my home, my nest, my place, my safe place in the world.

11. Patience – I want to foster patience in my life. I lose my temper and rush through so much of my life that I seem to expect others to do the same. I want to learn to take my time eating (who cares if everyone finishes first), enjoy baking things that are slow, understand that relationships can’t be rushed, linger in the bathroom. I want to learn that the journey is not in the destination, but the getting there.

12. Care – Take care with my heart. Don’t trust people without reason, but trust with reason.

13. Bravery – Bravery isn’t moving forward to and through scary circumstances, but learning to get up again and again after falling, getting up every time after being pushed down.

14. Simplify – Expunge all the negative people in my life, the people that try to drag me down to their level, expunge the mental clutter that keeps me from living the life and being the person I want to be, expunge my physical belongings to just the things I need and choose, rather than keeping all I have.

15. Open Mind – Have an open mind for new experiences, people, jobs, ideas. Know that bad or unexpected things happen, but it all usually comes out in the wash.