Lists

I make lists. I make a lot of lists. Short term, long term. Most I’ve written down, but some I still keep up with in my head. I use them to stay on track. To reach goals. So I don’t forget something or an assignment.

If you visit my house you’ll notice grocery lists in the kitchen, notepads lying on tables, and many sticky notes on my desk. Along with those I have lists stuffed in notebooks in the bookshelf above my desk. You should just see my Notes app on my phone.

And yet, I still can’t remember everything. I’ll walk into the other room about to call my mother asking her about a few things and I’ll forget one of the three things I was going to ask her. The phone call then would be pointless or end with me calling her back a few hours later when I remember what it was I had forgot.

I don’t suffer from short-term memory loss or even some might say I’m OCD about things, but I do like order in my life. I spend most of my time at home alone, so it seems natural that I have a constant sense of what I should be doing to avoid wasting time. But because I am alone, my thoughts are always racing. Racing from one topic to another. One idea to the next.

I have come to the conclusion that I keep lists to remember all the things my brain thinks of too fast. I simply think faster than I can keep up with.