“To Do” and “Done”

I have a complex relationship between routine and spontaneity. I am a full-fledged daughter of a concrete/sequential, ever-practical German immigrant mother and a military father who wrote poetry, listened to classical music, and willingly jumped into any new creative project, much to my mother‘s constant consternation. 

As a result of living a childhood floating between these polar opposite world views, I now live my life in the tension between two distinct lists. The first is a “to-do” list, which I make every morning, with little boxes in the margin that I can check off at day’s end and feel a sense of accomplishment. The boxes mostly remain unchecked. The second is a “done” list. At the end of the day, I write down all of the things that I actually did, and I put nice little boxes in the margin, and then I check them all off with a deep sense of satisfaction.

When you put the two lists side-by-side, they bear no resemblance to one another, which begs the question:

Why even bother?

But I do bother - every day. There is something so clean and perfect about a “to do” list that has not a single thing checked off of it, and there is something very satisfying about a completed “done” list that says things like: 

• went for a walk around the lake and blazed trails

• thought about life’s big questions

• organized a random, messy drawer and found some “lost things”

• took a video of a young squirrel learning to walk on flimsy branches

• watched the dog have deep thoughts while staring at the river

I don’t have a driving passion like some people do that sends them out the door in the morning. But if I look at my done list, these are the passions I’m starting to notice. 

• I love to think.

• I love words.

• and I love the way that the Earth speaks when I walk on it. 

I sometimes wonder: Is this enough? Shouldn’t I be saving the world somewhere? Shouldn’t I be eating locusts and wearing a horsehair shirt, yelling warnings on street corners?  And, more importantly, shouldn’t I be checking off that list of important things “to do” every day? 

Not surprisingly, the first thing on my “to do” list today was to clean the kitchen. But I made the mistake of looking at Google maps on my way to walk the dog and saw that there was a lake nearby that I had never seen before. I got to the place of decision on Main Street and turned left instead of right, taking “the road less traveled by,” and it truly did make all the difference.

When I returned home, the dishes still awaited placement in an empty dishwasher, but my head was filled with the images of my unplanned adventure. A lily pad filled lake embraced the entire field of my vision. The wind danced through the trees and along the shore as hopeful fishermen cast their lines into the rippled lake. A field of yellow flower tips competed with the rusted lines of a fence.

Now it is the end of the day. The house is still a mess. But I have put “writing down random thoughts” on my “done” list for today.

And for today, that will have to be enough.