Ever get to those things you’ve been putting off for ages? Or (equally possible) trying to get to, but seemingly always sent off course by washing baskets and meals to cook, and the like?
So we’ve (finally, finally) crossed off a few big must do items in the last little while. Putting up pictures. Securing bookcases.
It ought to feel great – and really, it feels good (particularly enjoying the pictures again), but less positive than perhaps it should.
I wonder why that is. These things take on an importance of their own when they stay on the list. One day, you finally do the thing you’ve been meaning to do, and it returns to its natural importance: which might not really be that much.
Sewing a badge on a judo kit. Contacting a friend. Making an appointment. They are very everyday really, probably not remembered much except when we turn back to diaries, or add them into a blog post.
Add guilt and Must to the picture, and the to do item inflates to at least twice its normal size. It can outweigh other items that are really the same size; it can loom over free time and dictate unease.
I am trying to get a better grip on my to do lists; trying to avoid them multiplying like moths (or dust balls, depending on the section of one’s to do list).
It seems to help to have them all in one place – because I’m not forgetting them, or finding them ‘jumping at me suddenly’, like Pooh’s gorse bush.
In fact, I think I would much rather be like Pooh, and have an important Expotition to do instead of my list.
If I could only Dicsover the North Pole, as Pooh manages to do, that would feel more significant than buying new socks to replace the very holey ones, or returning items to shops that aren’t quite right.
However, Pooh still manages to find a few useful Hums while walking about, seeing what is out there.
And since I have managed to scrape a blog post from a to do list, maybe that should offer a little more encouragement. For writing, at least, if not for taming the to dos.