I wanna Live my Life once but Live it a Million bucks!

Recently a friend texted me. His message was about the small stuff that should be done in one's lifetime which we generally overlook while taking care of more "important" stuff. It was about going out and living life once but living it a million bucks!!! The jar of life is not filled with the help of big stones but the small grains of sand that reach where even big stones can't. Running behind big achievements consumed almost 60% of my life. Racing out there, with school mates, then collegemates and then job mates and if no one was there then with myself! No time to sit back and enjoy a coffee with no tension of tomorrow or Mondays. Out of the remaining 40%, 30 % went in worrying about achieving those things. Making all the calculations, estimations, above all, manipulations to get it and the remaining 10% in living for myself. A mere 10%!!! I contemplated and realized it was unfair to me, by me. I was denying myself the right to live my own life. That's like a crime!
Then I thought of developing a TO-DO list for myself, taking cues from what my friend texted me and thinking some on my own after a few moments of retrospection. Here's what I came up with. So far it's 50. I have written check in front of those that are already done and those which still need to be done are empty. Also cancelled "Nothing" from my TO-DO list!

1. Take chances! { CHECK }
2. Tell the truth in an awkward situation. { CHECK}
3. Date someone totally WRONG for you! <> {CHECK}
4. Learn to say NO! { CHECK }
5. Spend all your money on things you like to do. <> {CHECK}
6. Fall in LOVE! <>{CHECK}
7. Feel a first KISS! <> {CHECK}
8. Get to know someone random! { CHECK }
9. Say I LOVE YOU to someone in life. <>{CHECK}
10. Be MEAN! {CHECK}
11. Make fun of people. { CHECK }
12. Sing out loud a rock number. { CHECK}     <>(have been booed by a bigg audience twice for singing ;))
13. Laugh at a stupid joke! { CHECK } (big time PJs fan)
14. Cry while watching a movie! {CHECK}
15. Take revenge! (If screwing a friend's ass for fun in retaliation means taking revenge then { CHECK } )
16. Apologize! { CHECK }
17. Laugh when you fall! { CHECK }
18. Get into a fight. { CHECK }
19. Tell someone how much they mean to you. {CHECK}
20. Tell the idiot how he/she hurt you. <> {CHECK}
21. Let someone know what they are missing. {CHECK}
22. Abuse someone who deserves it. { CHECK }
23. Sit alone and just watch the rain fall. { CHECK }(One of the things I love to do)
24. Laugh till your stomach hurts. { CHECK }
25. Dance even if you suck at it. { CHECK } (I am pretty good at it! :D)
26. Pose stupidly for pictures. { CHECK }(Can pose more stupidly)
27. Give someone a hug when he/she needs it. { CHECK }
28. Make sure you get one when you do. { CHECK }
29. Act like a kid. { CHECK }(All the time! Even my boss is pissed cause of this ;))
30. Jump up and down just like that. { CHECK }
31. Hit a guy hard on face in frenzy. <> (So very much wanna do. comeon guys! Be a sport)
32. Pierce my nose and colour part of my hair red! {CHECK}
33. Make someone smile. { CHECK }
34. Help someone you have never known before, in your first meet. { CHECK }
35. Dance in the rain. { CHECK }
36. Tell some creepy fellow you have known for sometime, who has been bugging you and you had been tolerating him/her, on the face that you would smash his/her face next time he/she bugs you. { CHECK }
37. Sleep all day, that means 24 hours!!! <> (16 hours so far!)
38. Be late to catch a plane/train. <> {CHECK}
39. Pack your bag and go out of your house not knowing where you have to go next and return not before a week at least. <> (One of the topmost things on my list)
40. Do a somersault. <> (Wishful thinking!)
41. Get drunk..and drunk bad...totally out. {CHECK ;)}
42. See a snowfall. <>
43. Whistle when a handsome hunk you don't know, passes by. <>
44. Tell your mum and dad everything you feel for them. <>
45. Go out camping for night. <>
46. Propose a guy. <> {CHECK}
47. Meet Sachin Tendulkar. <> (Another on Top most priority)
48. Ride a geared bike. <> {CHECK}
49. Audition for Roadies! ;) <> (Removing this as Roadies has become one crappy show)
50. For once do something without thinking at all, that just came in your mind and you would not have done it under normal circumstances. <> (Wanna do it all the time!)
51. Have to take a long trip to anywhere in India this year.
52. Get a body art.
53. Learn swimming.{CHECK}
54. Learn driving.{CHECK}
55. Learn a musical instrument(Guitar, of course).


So far doing bad!
This list might keep growing as and when I grow up and see more of life and realize there are more small small things that need to be done. I will keep writing check in front of the things as soon as I have done them. This is meant for my personal perusal. I am putting it in a public place so that I don't forget it and take it lightly too for that matter. This way there's a deadline on head and the deadline is LIFETIME!!! ;)
One thing that this list has taught me today is that it's easier doing things this way by making lists and keeping notes. I am a kindda person who will never make a TO-DO list till her grave. But this is a special TO-DO list then. It's not meant for the professional tasks I have at hand for the month or the personal list of tasks that I have to complete by the end of this week, else there won't be electricity or may be water or internet or may be even food cooked by mum cause she'll be highly annoyed. It's meant to live the occasion called LIFE :)

I am Iris!

"Iris, where have you been lately?" asked a friend of mine who is at the other end of the phone. I don't have words. What I want is this conversation to be over asap. Although I ain't no soul that goes by social protocols or something but this time i somehow felt thats its good to be good. So i held on. I replied "Bas aise hi yaar. You say!" making futile attempts to throw the ball in his court. "I have told you everything about me in past one hour. What i am more interested in is to know what you have been upto lately?". Now, I can't take it any more."Hey, mum is calling for dinner. Gotta go." It's 7:30 in the evening and I realized that's a lame excuse but I just blurted it out without thinking. "So early!!!" "Well, yeah! Winters setting in, so dinner early these days. I'll catch ya later. Take care." And I hung up the phone. Held onto the dial for sometime and then let it go. After all it's just a non-living thing.

I had my dinner by 9 and got into my room by 10:30. I like it here. Just me. Noone else. My bed, which is my "spot" as Sheldon says it in the big bang theory. My laptop which has become the only constant in my life these days, without which I cannot imagine my life now, call me an addict if you want. My fav doll and the only doll I ever liked in my life, I call it Suz. And yeah my diary! My outlet, my punching bag, my best friend. Its a one sided friendship. It knows everything about me that noone knows and noone ever will. Thats why I put a lock on it.

I am not the kind of a person which shows up in the above few lines. I am chirpy, I am loud, I am fun. People love hanging out with Iris. I have a gazillion friends and some of them really close. But there is part of me which is mine just mine. Nobody else has any right over it, so far. I make friends with people, get really close. They love me, I love them. It's good till here. Then it starts getting creepy. They start getting too close, making me a part of their life, their being, their thoughts. They want them to be heard always, taken care of with their problems. Like I am a punching bag or something. It all goes wrong here, messy. At times I wanna be heard too, expect a solution to my lil problems. So I become "selfish". And then I start eluding them. And then they start taking notice of me but I have moved on.

"Iris is ruthless, she's selfish, she's bitchy and yeah! of course she's narcissistic. Don't know what she thinks of herself to be." I hear it all the time. All fault is mine. I get in touch with people, make them feel good and heard, at times so much so that I forget myself and get totally invloved in their problems, lives, situations, all this being done with honest intentions of helping them. But I guess I don't know where to draw the line. I am a person of few words. I expect people not to understand what I say but to understand what I don't. And they don't understand it. May be that's like expecting too much. And it all starts there. Expectations! They also start expecting to me be always there for them, to listen to them. When I start thinking about myself and not give them that amount of time then I become this "bitch" who is selfish, demeaning and mean!

And yes, I love myself. What's the deal in that. It's good to love yourself, who you are. Why being ashamed of what you are and what you did? It's a part of you. If you say you are not in love with yourself then probably you are cheating yourself into this illusion. You love yourself more than anyone else!

There is no problem in being alone out here as long as I know that at least I am honest to myself. But yes, it would be great to share a piece of me effortlessly, that so far is completely in my possession. Someone with whom I can talk over the phone endlessly without having track of time, with whom I don't have to think about what I am saying. Someone who understands not what I say but what I don't say. A friend!

Till then, Iris is this "self-obsessed" gal who controls the amount of the light(read people) that enters her life.