I'm rereading Oriah Mountain Dreamer's The Invitation.
This was a Christmas present from my sister, and the only thing I read during the Christmastime trip to New York to visit my inlaws.
Extensive self-analysis follows...

I'd have to say that the experience of reading it was the capstone of the arch-doorway I built out of decision upon decision. My life was not as I needed it to be, nothing like what I'd dreamed it would be. A myriad of decisions had put me in this place, many many miles from the path that would feed my soul.
There was a short, sharp shock of the steering wheel as I executed 90 degrees of delta-v, heading in a new direction, across barren, unknown territory.
My point?
I have lived the "unexamined life that is not worth living", to paraphrase RW Emerson... sometimes for moons at a time, once or twice for years at a time. Operating on autopilot, accomplishing that which keeps breath in the body and a roof over my head. And usually, my spirit, my soul, was slowly starving to death.
I require accomplishment. I require change. I require love, respect, attention, music, sunlight, and dancing.
But it is a mite scary, going from a state of believing, "I don't want anything, all my physical needs are met" to understanding, "My emotional and spiritual needs are equally important as my physical needs," with the corollary "Now I have to discover or acknowledge or excavate, what, precisely, those emotional and spiritual needs are."
Mertuil had a great post a few weeks back... she covered lots on the topic of wanting/not wanting, needing/not needing, the social acceptability of wanting. And then, she made a list of I wants.
Bravissima.
You inspire me...
Not necessarily to make a similar list today, but in recognizing that it is okay to WANT stuff. And that not all the stuff I want is STUFF. Mostly it's not.
I'll say this for my Xpouse - he didn't begrudge me any possessions. I am well provided for, all pots, pans, art, furniture, that I require, I have.
So those spiritual and emotional needs...
* To live in a home with my two kitties again.
* A safe warm place with windowledges for my kitties, and room for enough bookcases.
* A job that doesn't just put food on the table, but which feeds me emotionally or spiritually, whether by the work I am doing or the atmosphere, including coworkers, in which I am doing the work.
* A romantic relationship that supports and encourages me to be the best possible me I can be, which challenges my assumptions and pushes me beyond what I thought were my limitations.
* A spiritual practice that is active and grateful on an everyday basis, and which accomplishes things that improve the lives of myself and those around me, friends and strangers alike.

It's scary to want things. It's scary to admit to having ideals or crazy obsessions, or to lusting after someone or something.
It's not polite.
It's not what the "good girl" in the back of my head (aka the Critic, in Sark's lexicon) wants to admit to.

Gods bless my friend Anne, who asked me why did I want to remain friends with the Xpouse, when I said something about it. I said, somewhat sarcastically, "Because good girls do that sort of thing." She replied, "But you're not a good girl anymore. You're a divorcee!"
Now this may sound harsh, but she'd been there, she'd left an unfulfilling, non-nourishing relationship, and she knew enough of how things stood with me and Xpouse.
What she said opened a little door in the back of my head. (Remember, like at the end of The Truman Show?) It was a little like the epiphany I'd had, some several months before, when I realized I might never have kids, or might grow old on my own, without a permanent partner. Just opens up new paths that had previously been unconsidered.
They might not be paths you think you'd like for yourself now, but even having a grasp of the possibilities available is incredibly empowering.
And then, you consider how to make your life rewarding and rich, even in the face of one of these potential, previously unconsidered paths.
And you realize that there is virtually no reason why your life can't be a beautiful thing, with loving accomplishments, friends, family, community.

So, even if I'm a "bad girl" (which makes me giggle, actually), and even if I never hook up with a permanent partner or soulmate, my life is worthy.
And even if it's not polite, or pretty, I'm going to enthusiastically go after all those things that feed my soul.
...even if I can't have those things forever... (hell, who said anything lasted forever anyway?)