2011 To Do List

When I sit down to come up with New Year's Resolutions I ask myself, "What do I want out of life?"  Well, the basic answer this year is, "I want to be happy."  This tells me that I am not currently happy, or as happy as I believe I could be.  I am happy-ish, but there are things keeping me from being the best me I can be.  So here's what I want to do in 2011 so that at the end of the year I can say I am happier than I was at the end of 2010:

1.  Stop being such a perfectionist.  Basically, I have close to impossible standards for myself and I get really upset/frustrated/down on myself when I don't reach perfect.  I am setting myself up for failure and this causes me a lot of unhappiness.

2.  Get more sleep.  I am a terrible sleeper.  I have bad insomnia where a lot of nights I won't be able to fall asleep until 4 or 5 am which is a big problem during the work-week) as well as PLMD and feel like crap most days due to lack of sleep.  I get grouchy and impatient and feel very sloth-like.  I hate being this way.  I honestly don't know how much control I have over this but I need to keep working towards getting more/better sleep.  Sometimes I get working on something or really into a tv show and don't go to bed as early as I should.  I want to try taking a natural supplement called melatonin every night for a couple of weeks which is supposed to help with sleeping and go to bed at 10:30 pm every week night.  I want to try eating dinner earlier, maybe knitting in the evening to help wind down by doing something fairly mindless. Maybe some therapeutic writing.

3.  Learn a new skill/hobby.  I like to do this every year.  Learning something and feeling like I've progressed/grown as a person makes me happy.  Feeling stagnant makes me unhappy.  In 2010 I learned to knit.  In 2011 I want to buy a sewing machine and learn to sew.

4.  Take a late winter/early spring vacation somewhere warm and new to me.  I have 1 day shy of 5 weeks of vacation next year.  I had 4 weeks and 2 days to use in 2010 and ended up taking 2 weeks off at the end of the year just because I would lose it if I didn't use it before the end of the year.  We have the vacation time and money to travel now, so we shouldn't waste the opportunity.  Right now we're thinking maybe Hawaii!

5.  Decluttering.  I am a bit of a packrat and have saved so much crap from my past that I really just don't need.  Clutter makes me feel very unsettled and like my life is a mess, which is obviously undesirable.  I made some good progress last year but there is still a ways to go.  Also, my boyfriend now lives with me and really needs some more space to call his own.  I hope to have this done by July 1.

6.  Lose 10 pounds by July 1.  Being a little overweight and feeling frumpy bothers me.  I will concentrate on diet and putting good things into my body but exercise will be a part of this, too.  I have osteoporosis at a VERY early age due to my Turner's Syndrome and I really need to make sure I an doing whatever I can to keep as much bone density as possible.

7.  Expand upon the number of meals I know how to cook.  I want to start small here and start with just learning one new meal a month.  I just got a great new Alton Brown Good Eats cookbook for Christmas so I think that sounds like a good place to start.

I want to look back ay all these goals every quarter.  When you have goals that are set for an entire year I think it's important to look back and check on progress and re-evaluate and  re-prioritize every few months to keep on track and maybe drop some items off the list and/or add new ones.

What are some of the things on your 2011 To Do List?