10 day challenge: 7 wants

I am done with my 10 secrets, 9 loves, and 8 fears. It’s time to move on to 7 wants. Well, 7 is a very small number for the things that I want.

There’s stuff that I wish every day, like ready-made homemade food; 16 hrs of sleep; hot, relaxing, bubble baths; no morning rush; no unexpected problems.

Then, there’s stuff that I wish every weekend. Like a robot that will take care of the piled-up work such as vacuuming, laundry, cleaning the furniture, paying bills, organizing wardrobes, cleaning the toilets, checking for grocery, buying grocery, cleaning the refrigerator, ironing clothes, making preps for the coming week. Lots of “me” time for reading and relaxing.

However, this post is going to be about my ongoing wants. I am going to do some cheating with this post and use sub-bullets to cover many wants under one big headingJ I played fair with the earlier posts, so it’s ok if I cheat in thisJ This one’s going to be a long post for the obvious reasons.

1.   To get the same parents, husband, daughter, brother, SIL, and best friends in all future births. I would also add my former boss, AP to this list. I am not even sure if there’s after birth or anything like it. But if there is, then I would definitely like the same set of people in every birth.

2.   To complete all projects that I start: Started a lot of things, finished some. Spent 6 years learning Bharatnayam, didn’t finish it. Spent a good amount of time learning yoga and gymnastics, hardly practice it. Spent some money learning how to bead, still am lazy to bead every weekend. Have lots of wonderful ideas. Don’t have the motivation and energy to execute them. My want would be to finish every important thing that I start. To have boundless energy, motivation, and enthusiasm.

3.   To get serious about my health

a.   Never to have common cold again: I am extremely susceptible to common cold. I get it from anywhere, anytime. I have it for months and months. When I was pregnant and couldn’t take medicines, there was a time when I had cold for whole 2 months. I do not have sinus; it’s just that I catch cold very fast. Spend an hour in the pool, the next day I will start sneezing like crazy. I hate it. I hate having a runny nose, breathing through my mouth; I would want to increase my resistance power and never get the stupid, irritating common cold again.

b.   Start exercising: Not to look slim, but to be fit. I am fed-up of falling sick for stupid things. Need to exercise, stop eating as much junk food, and stop procrastinating going to the gym.

4.   To work on happiness project: I am at that point in my life where at times I think that life has no meaning. What’s the use of slogging, earning all that money, bothering about bills and retirement; if one fine day you are going to go away from this earth? Of course, life is beautiful. But what is the use if we keep worrying?
I learnt about the happiness project and want to adapt it in my life. Not follow it completely, but take the main things. For example, spend half-hour each day to do what makes you happy.

5.  To learn to let go: I won’t and don’t preach “Forgive and forget”. I will never be able to forgive some people who have hurt me immensely. I also won’t preach “Let go of your ego” or something similar. I think everyone should have some amount of ego, or would it be self-respect? But I would definitely like to learn to let go of small things that bother me endlessly. Like a relative’s rude remark, someone not replying to my email, someone’s sarcastic comment. Once something happens and I feel bad about it, it should go away from my mind. Vanish. No pondering, bickering the next day. If I am able to achieve that, my life will be much better.

I also want to learn to stop getting hyper on futile things. What if we reach 15 minutes late, what if we don’t cook today, what if we Learn to take a deep breath and think “what’s the worst that I can happen if I or we don’t do this”? Most of the times the answer is not severe. If I am able to achieve this, my life and those of everyone around me, will be much better.

6.   House stays clean at least for 5 hours after I clean it: I spent 3 hrs last Saturday to clean my apartment’s hall and kitchen. I scrubbed the kitchen cabinets, cleaned the furniture, vacuumed the hall, and mopped the kitchen. All this on a Saturday afternoon when the very creatures (my husband and daughter) who make mess in the house, took a jolly good nap. They were both snoring! Their snores and peaceful sleep aggravated me and gave me extra power to do the cleaning. Once they woke up, husband said something on the lines of “wow, apartment is looking as good as new”. Within the next 2 hours, I saw that the house started returning to its earlier messy state. He kept books here and there; she spilled stuff here and there. Gone was my 3 hrs of hard work. There’s no point in setting rules if no one’s going to follow them. It’s not that they don’t help me. My daughter keeps her toys in her toy chest most of the days. But she’s two and a half; she spills stuff on the furniture and carpet.

It’s not that I am a cleanliness freak. But I do get upset, hyper, and depressed in varying degrees when I see mess in the house. My want is that my house stays clean at least for a decent period of time after I have cleaned it.
7.   Global warming: This one freaks me out and has been a major topic of thinking. Notice how all the weather conditions have become extreme? Extreme heat wave, heat warnings, high heat index. Extreme flooding, rains; regular tornado warnings.

All this, thanks to global warming. I am trying to do my bit to save the earth. I am careful about using water and using power only when it’s necessary. I do not print pages and pages of documents. I switch off lights when I leave a room.
I want everyone to get serious about global warming. If each one of us does his part, maybe we’ll have the Earth as a healthy place for our next generation.

Phew, what a long list!

See you next week with my list of 6 places.