More Notes to Self

I'm now beginning to get ready for the interior painting of my house, which means I will need to empty out closets and the larger shelves, and take everything off the walls. In going through one stash area, I found something that I'm not sure why I kept. It's a small dry erase board that I got from some race somewhere, I have no idea when. It folds in two, and is intended to hold emergency phone numbers, and then it has a "Things to Do" page.

Below, reprinted for your pleasure, are my Things to Do as of November, 2004. I have left out the 3 items that were triathlon related, since they just had to do with some time goals. The list is in order that I wrote them down. I think I sort of had a plan back then, and since that time, many aspects of my life may have changed, but it's still a good list, I think. I suppose I could have written down things like places I want to travel and races I want to do, but I can sort of remember the day I put this together, and this is what I came up with:

1. Find and keep a mate
2. Be my best
3. Think about retirement
4. Stay employed 5 years
5. Be in the moment at work
6. Do a good job
7. Remember what's important
8. Be a better friend
9. Stay strong in the face of adversity
10. Become more self-aware
11. Let go of attachments
12. Surrender

I guess at the time I wrote this down I had a 5-year plan to be ready to retire (yes, it's an early one!), which means just switching gears from a full-time job that pays the bills to something else that I'd really like to do and maybe also moving or at least figuring out where I want to live the next 20 years or so. Or, I could rephrase it to, "If I could do anything I wanted and could get paid decently for it, what would it be?" So I'll leave #3 on there.

Everything else looks pretty good to me. I find it funny that this "Things to Do" list is so reflective of what I now consider important in my life.

This getting my house ready to be painted is becoming emotional. When I pick something up and really look at it and touch it and remember when I got it and what was going on in my life and then decide whether I want to keep it, put it off to the side or toss it, it makes for some thinking. I remember being young and single and carefree and not owning a lot of stuff. Now, I'm no longer young, not as carefree and have a ton of crap! But a lot of it is good crap, you know? Still, I think I will be eliminating a bunch of things. It's good to touch, think, remember, honor the feelings, and then move on. As hard as this is, I know it's the right thing to be doing right now.