What I Want for 2011

We're entering the final hour of 2010 here, and I'm listening to Chris Thile and Punch Brothers (I have his solo efforts and the band together all in one delicious shuffling iTunes playlist; I do know they're all one mighty entity...) as I do the expected and think about the year that is fading and the one that is waiting just outside the doorway waiting to come in.

2010 was, in many ways, a good year for me.  I did some things I have wanted to do for a long time. I went to Italy and saw the Colosseum. I was an AP reader.  I took the first of what I hope will be many pottery classes.  I survived.

In other ways, though, I have come to realize that I set few goals, have been living in a form of stasis.  Therefore, what I want out of 2011 is a breaking-loose of the ice inside, movement instead of stillness.  In no particular order, these are the things I'd like to have, do, or gain by the end of 2011.  I usually hesitate to make this sort of list because I usually find that when people (myself included) do, they just have to look back at the end and shake their heads at all the things they didn't get done.  However, I also have come to believe that there is a danger in having no goals at all, no ambitions or aims.  That leads to the list.  I am going to....

• Have more roses in my life. -- I don't care if they are sterling silver rings, duct tape ones from that maker on Etsy, painted ones on bone china tea cups, great felt brooches on coats and hats, embroidered ones on handkerchiefs, a few buds bought for me by me in a grocery store florist, or the hardy few grown in my front yard.  I don't care that some people will sneer at their old-fashioned-ness and call them a cliche.  They are beautiful to me.  They make me happy.  They remind me of my Nana.  I'm going to have them. 
• Seek wisdom. -- I try to do this diligently anyway, but there is particular type I am pursuing right now, the wisdom of when to let a thing go.  Additionally, I am seeking the wisdom of what to do when letting go is not allowed, not the right thing to do at all, when holding on to the living coal is what, against all odds and sanity, you're called to do.
• Accept less crap as my responsibility/fault. -- I could have also labeled this as "Not be God/Queen of the Universe," I suppose.  I had dinner with a very wise person not too long ago who sort of changed the way I looked at some of my situations.  If I am doing the very best I can, and I know that I am, then I'm going to have peace with that and not tear myself apart mentally and physically through stress and worry over aspects that I cannot control.  (Wait.  Isn't that a part of the Serenity Prayer?  I'm not systematically rewriting it here, am I?  No....probably not.  I think I'm safe in saying there are no roses in the Serenity Prayer...)
• Make sure I make time for home.  -- It is so easy for me to make home last.  Work consumes everything so easily, and I come home to a house that never quite gets tidy, to chores that never quite get done, to tasks that never quite get finished.  I've watched my mother do it for years.  Part of it is that I'm single and the house is empty except of the furries when I come home, but that is an excuse, too, in its way.  If I don't start making a life outside that building, I will wake up one day to go to my retirement, be handed a triviality, and wonder where all my time went.  I don't want that life to be mine.
• Care for myself more.  -- And that means that it does matter that there is nothing in the refrigerator sometimes but Diet Mountain Dew and yogurt.  And that means that it does matter that I need to take the time to do something "unnecessary" for myself like painting my toenails some ridiculous color nobody but me will ever see.  And that does mean that I need to find some form of regular exercise and stick with it, something that will help me vent the stress.  Yoga and I, as much as I love it, are not going to be friends.  My knee, even after the rebuild, will not bear weight with motion if I'm kneeling for extended periods of time, so anything on my knees, especially the poses that bear all my weight on one knee are painful.  With regret, I need to quit waiting for it to strengthen.  There is too much of the meniscus gone.  Back to the gym for me.... 
• Write. -- Take focused time to sit down, cut off the TV (no matter which of my smart, tempting imaginary men is on at the time), and produce.  I have three storylines stranded right now and I haven't written any good poetry in a very long time.  Writing is a discipline, and I am out of it.  Writing can be an escape, and I'm not taking it.
• Go on one fabulous trip somewhere.  -- I want to go somewhere, and it doesn't even HAVE to be out of this state if there is anywhere here I can squeeze fabulosity out of, that I can look back on and say, "Freakin' awesome."  And yes.  For me, Graceland would qualify....
• (And last, the one least likely to come true) Find someone to be sitting with next New Year's Eve. -- Because, not that I don't love you, gentle reader, but I really would like to be reflecting on what the year has wrought and looking into what the new one will bring with someone.  I would really like to be sort of semi-nervously (or, perhaps not nervously at all) waiting for midnight to come so I could press my lips to his in celebration, in relief, in defiance, in promise, in all the things that a New Year's kiss is supposed to symbolize if it's not made with some stranger you snog in a darkened corner at a party.

It's an ambitious list, to be certain.  And I'm certain that at this time next year, we can all have a hearty laugh over my lack of  completing it.  Again, though, I'm forced to say that reaching for nothing gains nothing.  Perhaps if I reach my hands out wide to grasp all these stars, a few of them might fall into my lap by accident if nothing else.

Happy New Year to you wherever you are.  May all that you want come to you in the year to come.