I truly hate this time of year. Why?
- Cold.
- Taxes.
- Darkness.
- Seasonal affective disorder.
- General sense of foreboding and/or malaise.
Not to mention I’ve been having a real sad about the general state of the world, what with all the Russians and the dead kids and the golf-club-wielding-heads-of-state. After a flawed attempted at sharing peer-reviewed research on the internet, I’ve basically been hibernating and sulking about having to eat healthy and go to work in order to maintain my adulthood. I write things on my to-do list like “take a shower” and “eat breakfast”, not because there’s any real risk of me forgetting these things, but because goddammit, I need something to feel good about.
I’m a list-maker. I like making lists. I even have this quote hanging in my office that says, (paraphrasing, I forget the exact words) “Each day find three things you can do really well. Then, let the rest go.” Which is kind of the ironic anti-list list, because it’s like, hey, try to live more in the moment and don’t focus on making long lists to accomplish but do that better by making a SHORTER list. So meta.
Similarly, Wife will tell you that I have a favorite past time of turning EVERYTHING into a task to be accomplished or a competitive challenge. (See also– 30 day exercise challenge, read 50 books in a year challenge, write a novel in a month challenge, etc etc. ) It got so bad that my only new year’s resolution this year was to not do anymore time-based challenges. (Which I’m actually just realizing the irony of right now as I type this. hahaha.)
Nonetheless, I’ve been on this real death-and-terrible-things-inspiring-introspection podcast kick lately (see: Terrible, Thanks for Asking, This is Actually Happening, and Everything Happens). I’m not really sure how I got sucked into this genre, but it does seem to be a hit on iTunes lately. My best guess is that many of us are feeling a little unsteady in our world these days, and also the beautiful thing about these podcasts is that they’re just so human. But anyway, thinking and talking about death and dying smacks me in the face with a serious truth– all of our listmaking, goal achieving, weight-loss challenging, 30-days-to-a-better-you is based on the idea that there will be 30 more days. It is as much about “pacing yourself” to accomplish things as it is a prayer for the future. A hope and belief that you have more days. Just as I’ve always believed that (in many cases), regret about the last moments you had or did not have with someone before they died is as much about a last ditch effort to feel like we are in some kind of control as it is about the actual thing itself. That if only we had done this thing or that thing, we would feel better. We would feel less powerless.
I’m trying to make fewer lists and be more present, and more human, just like we’re all trying. (Or so I’ve decided to believe.)
But some days I still make lists. Because if making lists is a small prayer of hope for the future, some days I need a little hope. For old time’s sake:
Things I did to feel better about the state of the world in my 20s:
- Pretend/convince myself that I was a decent writer.
- Drink too much.
- Have politically charged arguments and believe I could actually argue my opponents into having common sense. (Okay, I still do this. Just with a little bit more ennui.)
- Try to feel superior about my awareness of independent/alternative cultural phenomena.
- Fling myself into any number of impulsive “life-affirming” projects which I was convinced were the key to everything, but really spend a lot of time analyzing the experience rather than experiencing the experience.
Things I do to feel better about the state of the world in my 30s:
- Make shorter lists.
Some Supervision Required. 