Guess what? The heavy veil of virus and cholera seems to be exiting Eldridge. I totally credit the chewy ice with my miraculous cure. I also credit my wonderful husband who truly did it all (even the dishes, which he always does anyway!) during the time I was taken to my bed. Now that I’ve sat up, I feel like I am truly starting my 2024. And like every day of every other year since I could hold a crayon, my beginning begins with a to-do list, which I will not finish in the allotted time and instead carry over like a bad debt for at least 7 years.
I never finish my lists. Mostly because my lists are a mirror of my soul: impossible and aspirational and unreasonable and hopeful and disjointed and without a sense of time.
But, still, I love a list! For me, it isn’t the completing of the list that I love, although crossing things off is fulfilling. What I really love is the act of dumping all the swirling thoughts out on paper. I think about so many things all at once—mange in bears and cholera and flooding in Camden and sturgeon caviar and writing websites and web traffic and cancer and cancer and more cancer and immunotherapy and clothes and clothes and more clothes and closet organization and the grade scale and the grade scale and the grade scale and woodworking and my bird feeder and the great egrets who now seem to live at my lake and what book I’ll read this weekend and when the next season of Bridgerton, my favorite regency (regency is fancy for porn) drama will be released!
The only solution, besides sending 7,000 disjointed, insane texts to a variety of people, is to make a list!
Sometimes, I even include “make a sublist for x topic” on my list. This allows me to make additional lists. My notebooks are filled with lists as well as doodles and sometimes actual writing. This week my list is dominated by college scholarship applications, nagging my senior rower to follow up with the collegiate crew coaches WHO EMAIL HER DAILY (WRITE THEM BACK LILY!), camping packing planning, work organization, making my FAFSA ID, pitching articles about bears and bugs and creating some sort of professional website so I trick people into believing I am a top of the line professional.
For this year, I have the following things on my list:
- Finish up 4 more graduate classes at Hopkins, so I can be on track to graduate in 2025
- Get my piece, which I refer to as “David,” published somewhere. I am currently waiting to hear that it was rejected and then I’ll pitch again!
- Publish some writing about birds and rowing and mange.
- Write here, nearly everyday, even when I have 17 hours of graduate school work,
- Meditate daily! Exercise more!
- Get my BirdBuddy to work.
- Send my oldest off to college, my middle off to sophomore year and youngest off to middle school and rejoice in how okay they seem to be turning out.
- Renovate many things (I won’t do any of this, but maybe I will!)
- Spend more time with my husband (he’s here all the time, except when he’s not and I want to spend more time with him!)
- Get back to a yoga class on the regular.
- Make more lists!!
- Love. I just want to love more.
I’ll do everything on this list, at least partially, maybe.
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