I often think to myself, “What would I do if I had no items on my to do list?” And to be clear, I have two of those lists at most times. The weekly one goes on a folded sheet of notebook paper and the daily one goes on a napkin. Not just any napkin–the ones from the pizza place are too hard to write on, but the coffee and bagel store has the perfect napkins for my needs.
(let me just put this here: no, these are not real problems. This is musing. A bull session.)
As a small, existentially distressed child I reacted with horror when my mom told me, apropos of the remodel they were doing on our house, that after they finished that, they would redecorate the living room, and then maybe my room, and then…it would probably be time to start the cycle again. The idea of never being FINISHED struck something in me. When do you get to rest and enjoy the changes? Now, as a somewhat less small existentially challenged (I’ve made strides; existential threat level is “guarded” most of the time here) adult, I find the opposite problem troubling: the ‘problem’ of having nothing left that needs doing.
It *seems* like if I took the several pounds of loose change that currently sit in a plastic bag next to my door to the bank and turned them into more easily usable money, if I took photographs of the mementos (playbills, ticket stubs, printed photos, wedding programs) I’ve saved in manilla folders for 2006-2018 and could thus discard the physical items, if I recycled all of the electronics that are in a plastic bin in my (nonworking, but black-dirt-ejecting) fireplace…that I would feel somehow at peace. But I’ve had the experience of an empty to do list (weekly edition), and I know that the way I actually feel when that happens is PANICKED.
Even in theory, that shouldn’t be the case. If I manage to finish the stack of books and magazines next to my bed, dust all of my surfaces, take the stack of old sheets and t-shirts to a textile recycling place…I could always read a single, solitary book, start a new project, or practice harp. There would be no shortage of things to do, simply an absence of a backlog. But I’ve had the experience of finding myself, midweek, with every item crossed off and a lack of “have to”…and have been slightly anxious because of it.
It’s definitely possible that if I hadn’t had the to do list in the first place, I wouldn’t feel anxiety over it’s “finished” status. I feel like there’s some similarity here between (I’m thinking of an Amy Clampitt poem here) losing a roll of film and all of the vacation memories it contained, but still having the memories of all of the things you didn’t photograph…it’s an imprecise metaphor, or one I’ve yet to untangle, but it feels accurate in some way.
