11 Things

What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?
---
11 things? What an arbitrary number. I've been staring at this prompt for the greater part of a day, and I still have very little idea of what to write. There are things I would love to not have to deal with in my life. But the reality of it is, I will never be able to eliminate those things.

Stress. Stress will always be here, in some form or another... I can't rid my life of it. I can't eliminate it. I can try to reduce it, sure. But a large amount of it is completely beyond my control.

Pain. Yeah, life is painful. That's just kind of a given. Nothing to do about that.

Judgement. I'd have to rewrite humanity to rid myself of that one... We judge. It's how we survive. Whether those judgements are correct or not is besides the point. We have to make them. Even of ourselves.

Labels. Again, another one of those staples of life. I would love to not have to use labels to describe myself to other people. But without using labels, I'd have to spend hours and hours explaining, without even having the context of other labels to use as a jumping off point. We categorize. It's our nature, to label and sort and try and get things into some kind of order we can understand. Without those labels, we're lost.

That's 4 so far... How am I supposed to come up with 11 without getting into really really shallow nonsense?

My life does not need dirty dishes. I'm tired of washing them, or having to prod other people to wash them. I wish I could just have them magic themselves into the dishwasher, and then into the cupboards again when they're clean. But that's not going to happen. Instead, they will pile up on the counter, cleverly avoiding getting into the dishwasher when it's run, breeding, until I finally break and can't stand it anymore and just wash them myself, no matter who's job it was originally to take care of them.

Dust mites. I could really do without dust mites. If they would all just up and die, I could save $50 a month for my allergy prescription, and not have to worry about ending up with eosinophilic pneumonia or crippling widespread chronic pain ever again. Again, not gonna happen. And no amount of vacuuming or spraying or washing things will even get rid of the ones in my house. So, pointless to even think about that one...

Ugh. This list feels like an exercise in futility... And I just can't bring myself to be superficial enough to make it easier. So fuck it. I'm done. 6 is more than half. That's good enough.