For next spring, when a dream will be fulfilled after 14 years of waiting.
Will it be everything I’ve hoped for? Will it be everything I’ve feared?
I haven’t looked forward to something with this much anxiety, this much excitement, this much sheer joy and terror since…well, I can’t remember a time.
It’s still at least 8 months away, and already I can’t eat or sleep. But I’ve said too much! Can’t jinx it!
I’m looking forward to raising my children, reading good books (and good threads), and petting all the cute furry animals I possibly can (plus some of the ugly ones).
Also, when I get old, I’m going to dress really weird and do whatever I want, all the time. Yeah, I can’t wait to do that!
The end of morning sickness.
My beloved husband, the baby due in January, our darling friends. Growing old with my beloved, and raising our children, and going to church, and talking to God. Reading. There are thousands of good books that I haven’t read yet.
Getting to move house in two weeks. I love moving furniture around.
I like life. It’s interesting. It can be painful, but it’s so interesting. And existence itself is so beautiful and ugly and complex.
*I have been thinking about existence lately. In fact, I have been so full of admiration for existence that I have hardly been able to enjoy it properly. As I was walking up to church this morning, I passed that row of big oaks by the war memorial… and I thought of another morning, fall a year or two ago, when they were dropping their acorns thick as hail almost. There was all sorts of thrashing in the leaves and there were acorns hitting the pavement so hard they’d fly past my head. All this in the dark, of course. I remember a slice of moon, no more than that.
It was a very clear night, or morning, very still, and then there was such energy in the things transpiring among those trees, like a storm, like tavil. I stood there a little out of range, and I thought, It is all still new to me. I have lived my life on the prairie and a line of oak trees can still astonish me.
I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again…*
-Marilynne Robinson
What am I living for?
The shortest-range answer is food and water and sleep and sex. But those are the hardwired drives that every mammal has, and a good many other creatures as well. There are vaster reasons layered on top of those basic urges, though. Three of the most important:[ul][li]To design houses and cities that help their inhabitants live more healthily and freely. [/li]I’ve been helping out on a project to build a house for a lady, and we’ve been wading through a truly unbelievable amount of petty small-town bureaucratic bullshit, and the only thing that keeps me going on it sometimes is seeing her planning how she will live in the place when it is finished. It’s an unambiguous act of good, and a way in which I can actually say I’m doing good in the world, as opposed to just looking out for myself.[/ul][ul][li]To do my art.[/li]My art is drawing and writing: visions of how we could be doing things better, visions of the horrors we can avoid.[/ul][ul][li]To learn to be a full human being.[/li]This is the other big project: the struggle to understand myself and the ways in which I fall short, to fix them if possible, and thus to make myself a better person. It’s all about understanding why I am not attractive, why I haven’t done well in social settings, how my fears have hamstrung me, and all that stuff.
Being a full human being also means looking outside oneself and giving for others. I read posts like Lissla Lissar’s describing her family–to grow old with one’s beloved–and I sometimes despair of how far behind I am and how much further I have to go… but I also realise how far I’ve come.
I thought a few years ago that I was incapable, possibly physiologically incapable, of learing social skills and body-language communications. I thought that the worlds of love and romance and marriage and fatherhood would be forever closed to me. I now know that much more than I ever dreamed of this is learnable.[/ul]
I’m living to raise my children, and to try to fulfill my obligation to them.
I’m also living to enjoy music, light, art, sex, food, and excellent conversations.
I’m living to exist. It’s a vicious cycle.
Because the idea of my son dealing with his mom’s death does not appeal to me in the least.
Because my cats expect to see me every day, and one of them always waits for me because I’m her favorite human.
Because it’ll get better… I hope.
Your son is a good reason to stay around.
To cats, you’re pretty much equally good dead as alive: you’re just a source of food, either as a corpse or a bowl-filler. Kind of like the difference between an annuitized jackpot and a lump sum payout.
Short term materialistic stuff:
Buying a new/different house that is nicer than the 20+year old town home we live in now and paying off my truck.
General:
I live life for myself. I live it for my husband. I live it for my family and friends.
I have many “ridiculous” goals for myself.
I live by the seat of my pants.
For the most part, I live for seeing where this journey called life takes me. I tend to not make too many long term plans because I always change my mind.
Work like you don’t need the money
Love like you have never been hurt
Dance like no one is watching
Sing like no one is listening
And live everyday as if it were your last (I am still working on this one- behold, I am the procrastinator)
No, I am not on drugs… 
New reason to live: I get to explain to my CLASS FULL OF NEW HIRES why I just snort-laughed at my monitor while they’re supposed to be taking a quiz.
Jerk.
That’s why I never do laundry. Who’d do laundry on their last day ever?
Darling, I’ll always think of you as the lump sum payout o’ love. 
Because my writing partner and I have nearly twenty ideas on our queue, and I want to meet those characters and explore their worlds.
No kids, DB, but thanks so much for reminding me of some of my reasons for living and my long forgotten goal of being a odd old lady. I’m halfway there, actually!
And live everyday as if it were your first! (I have laundry?)
My kids, their future selves, my mom, my cats, and about 1300 unread books waiting on my shelves. I live for all the new things I can learn and get excited about, and try, and collect, and discard, and become. I’m living because I don’t want to miss anything good that might happen, because I might be wrong about Mr. Right, and because I might surprise myself.
I’d do it only if all my pants or favorite bras were in need of of washing… Nah, I’d just go buy new ones.
Beer.