Friday, September 29, 2017

Put It On The List

I’ve been a list-making freak since as far back as I can remember.  My early ones consisted of plotting decades out at a time – none of this shopping list malarkey; that was for amateurs.  No, I’d find myself indexing years of activities in one sitting  – usually during French lessons in the sixth form (that’s almost 30 years ago. Yikes!). 

And they were mental (my lists, not French lessons).  On one occasion, I recall indexing a ten-year period with a Top 5 that went something like this:

1.Pass A Levels
2. Get degree
3.Start Career – businesswoman (stock broking)
4.Get flat
5.Think about marriage

Not even joking.

Is it any wonder really that I went on to live my 20s in a perpetual state of anxiety? Crossing off each item took years!  Talk about projecting.  It was a totally nuts approach to planning.  Most of those things did actually come to pass but only as small punctuations to what was otherwise the narrative of my life just ambling along in the interim. 

Relationships came and went, people died, others were born, friends got married, flats were bought, then sold but the biggest surprise was the year I chucked in my career to go travelling at the age of 29.  So I never did get to become a stock broker.  And a good thing too as I’m shit at maths.

In between passing my A levels and getting round to ‘thinking about marriage’, I made crap loads more lists though these took a much shorter term view than the big picture teenage stuff and although they dealt with the minutiae they were no less bonkers . Sometimes they’d barely cover a few hours worth of activity, stuff like:

1.     Get up

I mean, I’ll stop myself there…seriously?  Get up?  I would actually make a list the night before and start with ‘Get up’.  Who does that?  A mental patient maybe.  As if I was in danger of forgetting what I needed to do on waking.   Next would follow something like:

2.     Shower
3.     Get dressed
4.     Have breakfast
5.     Bus to HMV – get application form

I promise you that was an actual to do list from around the time I first graduated and was looking for a in between job.   Holy Mackeral.

Eventually when I did get a proper job, the compulsion to write lists subsided dramatically.  I had no time to write lists out anymore.  Instead they happened in my head.  It was I’m sure a form of OCD. 

One night I made a mental list of how I was going to clean the flat.  A room by room strategic cleaning plan.  DEMENTED.  I have no doubt this must have made me a very difficult person to live/be with.  But then again, I must have provided some sort of entertainment as my first boyfriend stayed with me for twelve years and my ex-husband for ten.  And that flat was bloody clean….

When I think about it, I believe my need to write lists was linked to that wonderful release that comes with having accomplished something.  Some days to be fair, getting up was an accomplishment though I tend to set the bar somewhat higher today.  I think. 

I was cleaning out some papers the other morning when I came across a list I’d made a few years earlier of a number of flat viewings I had booked with an estate agent.  A normal list one might say.  But under the last entry, my then husband had added the following:

12:00 Buy a diary
12:30 Nap from all the confusion
2:00 Wake up and wonder


I guess I wasn’t fooling him.

Champion List Maker

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