To Do Or Not To Do
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I am a list person. I keep a daily list of what I have to do, with a system for notating what I don’t get done and for obliterating from the list with a heavy black Sharpie all traces of the things I manage to accomplish.
Anyway, since I tend to be the overly ambitious type – some call it completely unrealistic and others call it delusional – the list tends to have a lot of stuff that gets carried forward, because I don’t get to it. And then I create summary lists, which categorize the pending tasks on my list in different ways, breaking them into places I need to go, things I need to get, and things I need to do, etc. Yes, the pathology runs deep.
So, you can only imagine my mental state when the other morning, I caught sight of my chocolate lab puppy, Emmy Lou – part goat with an insatiable taste for socks, lingerie and a full range of paper products – hovering over my dresser, her long tongue toying with the corner of my lists. In a second, she had them in her mouth, chewing ferociously. (She’s not ferocious. She just chews like she is.) I could make out pieces of the lists rolled into small spit balls in the corners of her mouth but there was no way I would or could retrieve them.
Fifteen seconds of sheer panic, followed by moments of quiet, and then a strange sense of calm. I began to feel free, the way I felt when Alice Cooper would scream at the top of his lungs, “School’s out for summer. Forever.” The day had suddenly become my own, completely and unalterably. I could be spontaneous and in the moment, do nothing but what I felt like doing. A snow day, an unplanned vacation. How completely radical.
And as the day wore on, pieces of the list came floating back to me, random tasks remembered and consolidated on an index card. And by the next day, I was back in operation. List in hand. Raring to go and do. So, with summer upon us, this is what I urge you to do. For a day or two, put down your list. Shred it, bury it in your garden, ask your dog to hide it someplace for you. But lose it. And get into the moment. Enjoy the time with yourself, your thoughts and your feelings. And not to worry. All of those tasks will be waiting for you when you’re ready to return to them.
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