On Lists

An actual list I don't remember making


Somewhere along the way I picked up the habit of making lists. Typically these are checklists and "To Do" lists for organizing my thoughts into a very pleasing vertical column. I believe in lists and their effectiveness. I am absolutely more prone to accomplishment once I have made a nice list.

It's a bit like a superstition. It makes me feel better because it has worked for me in the past. Unless you are suffering from memory impairment, making a list does very little towards achieving your efforts, and in fact the act of writing a list forestalls them because by the time you find a pen you've forgotten what you were trying to remember.

An argument could be made for visualization. I suppose if you have taken the effort to create a sort of map of your goals, you will now be able to prioritize and perhaps even exclude the items once you have viewed them in the context of the other items. Once you have written it down you can plainly see that you should not 'Buy Halo 3' because you should 'Try to spend more time with sick relative.'

**(Note the verb try. It's subtle, but the keenest of you will notice that this item betrays an important loophole. It calls only for effort on my part, and not actual exertion. My lists are full of fun little trapdoors like this one. In this way, making a list helps me to alleviate guilt without having to do too much. Try it!)

Beyond buying the correct groceries, my love of lists is one of self-preservation. I am generous enough to think of myself as creative. I allow myself this egregious mischaracterization because I spend a lot of time thinking about projects I would like to undertake -- novels, screenplays, articles in The New Yorker, etc. If I am truly inspired my idea will incite a list, and it seems I become inspired rather easily.

When I am dead and gone and historians are mining my files in preparation for my Biography/Volume of Complete Works they will quickly realize that an entire section will have to be dedicated to lists. In fact, most of what I write goes no further than a short burst of nouns and incomplete sentences like,

"Leon. Dead-end job. Drinks. Accidentally invents a perpetual motion thingie."

While I admit I have done very little with myself artistically, I must concede that I have at least the impulse to be prolific. My lists are proof of that.

There is also a permanence to lists that I find enchanting. These fleeting thoughts which were recorded in a flurry will reappear later to my complete surprise. Sometimes I will remember fondly what triggered a certain impulse and I will laugh or feel very moved. More often though I will not remember composing the list at all, and it is these lists that I cherish the most.

It is as though a like-minded stranger was using my computer or sitting at my desk. He's watching me flounder and he is trying to help me. He knows I can't focus on things. He is trying to lay the groundwork so that I may move beyond him. He knows it is too late for him. He is trying to provide the future with what he has learned. It seemed important. He has given me a gift.

It is unfortunate that in so many cases the list is the only true goal I have set for myself. The act of listing seems to fulfill whatever creative impulse I was feeling at that time, and so I see no need to take the project any further.

Perhaps I enjoy the ambiguity of the unfinished work, the gaps allowing my mind to wander time and again. Though if I am being honest, I know that I just haven't a clue what I want to say, that I am a dreamer.

Still, my lists are records of my dreams, proof of my hope to create something new, and I feel very lucky to have these dreams because it means that I am free.