Lists

I don’t know about the rest of you, but my life seems to be ruled by lists.

Here are just a few:
Work projects (mostly with impossible deadlines)
Work documents (ever-increasing thanks to ISO)
Household organization & maintenance
Groceries & other shopping
Inventories (books, music, films, clothing, artifacts)
Self-improvement
Social events

Something about the industrial age lends itself to the creation of itemized schedules, as if no goal could ever be achieved otherwise. It’s linked to the quest for perfection, in some sort of mechanical sense. Even our families and friends get put on lists, as if we would forget about them otherwise. Everything carefully slotted in. No room for error. No allowance for mistakes. No creativity. No freedom.

We rely on lists to give structure and meaning to the routine of life. They punctuate and ease mundanity. They propagate – argument could be made that they are a kind of life-form, similar to clocks (but that’s a topic for another day).

I suspect that even after I retire, I will be unable to totally shake my reliance on these parasitic entities that infest my life. Perhaps I should put list eradication at the top of my list of retirement projects?