I'm a list kind of girl. Before packing for any kind of trip, I make a list of every little thing I plan on shoving in a suitcase and cross them off the list as I pack. When I have several things to do at work and start to feel overwhelmed with them, I make a list and slash through them as they're accomplished. It's not the speed with which I complete the tasks on any given list, it's being able to see the confirmation of my accomplishments. And since I have a tendency to forget things like a senile old woman standing outside her house thinking, "where the hell do I live?", it just helps to know what I need to get done.
This is the first page of a two-page "to do" list I made...jesus, quite a few years ago. When reading through it, I found that I can cross off "go to Chinatown" without even having realized I accomplished that one, which is a delightful feeling. On page two, I found "become a rape crisis counselor," which I've been doing now for about a year and a half. Thankfully, there are a few more things crossed off on the second page than there are on this first page and there are things on this page I no longer care about. I couldn't care less about owning a pair of expensive shoes since I generally hate things on my feet and I certainly am never going to suffer the physical pain of wearing 3-inch heels for the sake of making my feet look prettier or my legs longer. Is owning a pair going to make me a better person? No. So not only would it be a waste of my money, it would be a waste of my energy. I also don't have much of a desire to learn the saxophone anymore but I think I may replace that one with "relearn playing the flute." I'll shuffle things around a bit as a few experiences (go camping and play hide 'n seek) are things I've already done but have enjoyed and would like to do again. It's always good to re-examine one's priorities. And of course, I'll add some newbies to the list.
For quite some time now, for a number of reasons I could list and a number of reasons I don't even realize, I've let the list fall by the wayside. It's been hanging on my refrigerator exactly as it is in this photo for over a year. That's a year of having a constant reminder of random little and not-so-little things I want to do in life taunting me from my tiny little kitchen.
Fuck that. Hell, not everything on the list even takes a great deal of effort on my part. How difficult is it to add a movie to my Netflix queue and spend two hours watching it once it gets here? Not very. Other things like traveling and the very few experiences that involve someone else (having sex with myself couldn't be nearly as enjoyable as shared public indecency) will take quite a bit more effort than those I can accomplish entirely on my own. But the point has never been to just do the things that are simple or take little effort. The point has been to do the things I want to do. To put in whatever amount of energy and effort it takes to just do them.
And I haven't. So to that, as I said a paragraph ago in my ever-so-classy way, fuck that.
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