Mike Dean
I’ve just made one. A list that is. It’s a list of things I have to do. Some of them I have to do tomorrow. Most of them, I should have done yesterday. It’s a list: one of many. It won’t be the first time I’ve made a list and I’m pretty sure it won’t be the last.
My biggest problem in life is procrastination. I’m crap at planning things – but shhhh don’t tell anyone, because I spent half of my slave labour time working for people who thought that I could organise something better than a piss-up in a brewery. Well, in those days, perhaps I could. I had to get up in the mornings and GO to work. Now I get up in the morning when I feel like it, crawl into the kitchen, make flat bread, make tea, and take both into the lounge to eat and drink while I catch up on the non-news on Facebook and the fictional news on the BBC or in La Reppublica before looking for more reliable sources like News Thump! Then, I usually take a shower… and at that point, if I’ve not had students to see in the morning, it’s already midday.
Sometimes, like I just described in the mornings, my time goes really quickly – I imagine it’s because I exist in some kind of time field distortion that revolves around me – at others… when, for example, I’ve had to get up at 7am for some unknown reason (a god forsaken hour if ever there was one), it gets to 10 am, I’ve done everything I intended to do for the day (apart from lessons)… it drags. I still have lots to do, of course, but nothing more that I HAVE to do… so I can relax, sleep, play games, and waste time. Hmmm… exactly like I do the rest of the time.
My life philosophy, it seems, has always been to do today what has to be done today and leave until tomorrow what can be left until tomorrow. And then, leave everything you don’t have to do to someone else, because probably they’ll do it before you get around to it. The last of these, of course, only works if you actually HAVE someone else around who will do those things for you. I don’t. They don’t get done…. unless I make a list.
My list for tomorrow includes a shit load of cleaning: I’ve got to do the washing up, tidy the kitchen, clean the kitchen floor, clean the bathroom, strip the bed, stick the old sheets in the washing machine, remake the bed with new sheets, dust and hoover the lounge, and mop the floors. All essential stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree. And so boring. Other things on my list include buying cat food and litter. Yawn!
Of course, my list doesn’t end there… no, there are the umpteen more important things that I haven’t done for the last year and a half since coming here to Rome, bills to be paid, letters to be written, photographs to be processed, other lists to be made – things to be sold, things to be planned, things which need to be done some time next week or next year – then there are tickets for train journeys to be bought, airport transfer tickets to be bought, my bike to be fixed, possible new students to be badgered into submission, photoshoots to arrange, and blog posts outstanding since January to be written. The list is endless…. and incomplete.
However, tomorrow, I will take great satisfaction in crossing off the things that I do actually achieve. They will be few, but they will be achievements. Perhaps then, after a hard day of crossing off non-essential things to be done and filling my time with the humdrum boring shit I will make another list. It makes me wonder sometimes… am I better to have a list, or be listless… And yes, I did write this article just to make a bad joke, but I have made a list … :p
Allora! 