The write stuff.

Come on... don't you love the punny goodness in the title?

I'm obsessed with lists. That's no secret. I'm always making lists. My lists have lists. I've said it before: a friend from grad school once told me that if she ever needed to get me a present, it would be a notebook for all my lists :)

My bad habit is that I write something down and then somehow misplace the paper. On the plus side, my brain is wired to remember something better after I've written it down. (That's how I used to study in college... write everything on index cards, color code them, and then when it came time to take the test, I'd somehow remember where it was written and what color it was underlined in. Major genius? Or major geekiness?)

That's why New Year's resolutions appeal to me so much. I write things down, I categorize them, I make bullet points for each listing. I honestly think that last year's resolutions worked so well for me because I posted them on this blog. Even if I never looked at them again, I knew they were out there, in the blogosphere. Maybe that made me feel accountable... I don't know. But whatever it was, it worked.

So I've noticed lately that a lot of people are posting (or talking about) things they want to do sometime in their life. Not necessarily a list of New Year's resolutions... more of a bucket list. (I really don't like that expression though.) And since my goal for the year is Confidence, I thought about all the things I've always wanted to do, but never got around to doing. I've been working on a mental list for the past few days. It's still in the beginning stages, but I think it'll be good.

Once I post the list (which will be soon, I promise), I think I'll feel obligated to acknowledge it. It's kind of exciting. I feel like I'm giving myself permission to be selfish, and I'm trying hard not to feel guilty about it. (Once a Catholic school teacher, always a Catholic school teacher... lol...)

Some things on the list are simple... some are extravagant. All will make me a happy.

I think that's really all that matters here. Being confident means feeling good about myself. As I explained it to my father tonight, "It's the year of ME. I'm always doing things for other people... now I want to make myself happy." Of course that doesn't mean I'll stop doing things for others. I just want to be more aware of where I rank on my list of priorities. I deserve to be at the top of someone's list, don't I? So why not my own? And why not now?