10 Things...

I stumbled across an exercise on a blog I used to follow* that shared a 10/10/10 list. The exercise was inspired by this post. And while I'm sure both the blogger I used to follow (who shall remain unnamed since she's a great blogger, just not my thing) and this Cheryl Richardson are wonderful people, I won't be following either of them anytime soon. 

That being said, this is something that I've been off and on doing in my head all week anyway so I figured I might as well give it a shot out loud.  Only I made it a 5-er list because that's what came to me easily and the point wasn't to think about this ALL DAY.

Try it and see what you think.

Five Things To Say Yes To

• An awesome opportunity to see some of the most important people in your life, even if it stretches the budget and requires time you don't have
• A glass of wine after work with a girlfriend who you don't get to see very often
• Another book recommendation
• An invitation from the cat to stretch out on the bed after work and scratch her between the ears for a while
• Warming up leftovers for dinner because you're too lazy to cook

Five Things To Say No To

• A ride home when you walked to work and it might drizzle sometime in the next hour
• The friend-request from someone who once sat next to you in a random class in high school and told you that you weren't good enough to be their friend or any email, text message, or Facebook request from an ex-boyfriend
• An invitation to go out on the weekend when you just really don't want to go
• The "opportunity" to serve on another committee which means next to nothing to you
• Wearing shoes around the house (or under your desk for that matter)

Five Things That Will Make My Life Better

• Trying to start over on the exercise plan I developed two weeks ago that I have accomplished exactly once
• Working harder on my relationships with real and honest friends
• Figuring out how to organize my closet and drawers to make it easier to find everything I own so that it actually gets worn
• Getting back into the habit of not biting my nails
• Feeling confident that I can make the right decision for myself every time

I'm adding one of my own, just as a reminder...

Five Things That Will NEVER Make My Life Better

• Beating myself up about the fact that I can't fit everything that should get done into every single day
• Going out of my way to please friends who would never go out of their way to return the favor
• Another dress / pair of boots / sweater... no matter how cute they are
• Splurging on another crappy nail polish color that will only get worn once in an effort to motivate myself to stop chewing my nails until they bleed
• Listening to what everyone in the peanut gallery has to say about how to live my life

So there you have it, friends.  I should add "blogging daily" to my five things to say yes to list but we'll get there again someday.  In the meantime, know that I'm trying all while having lots of long-distance phone conversations, snuggling with my fluffy babies, and trying to keep the clutter at bay in my apartment, all while working, working, working.  

*I have to admit that all of the blog reading I started doing over the summer in order to inspire my own blog got overwhelming and left me even less inspired. Really it just made me feel not good enough, not pretty enough, not rich enough, and way too busy to possible do the things those people were doing. So I spent the last few weeks unsubscribing from blogs. If you're a reader and I unsubscribed from yours, please don't take it personally. I just realized that it isn't doing me any good to following things that don't resonate with me. Blogging is a personal journey and there are plenty of people who I follow who I don't really have much in common with but who still somehow enrich my life, my own writing, etc. There were so many more though that I got nothing from - I don't like their sense of style, find their politics (or grammar for that matter) offensive, whatever. So in an effort to declutter my life and clear my head, I unsubscribed. Sorry. It needed to be done.