Lists.

Like most women, I guess, I love to make lists. I wasn't always like this--I think as I get older and realize my brain can't remember more than three things I need at the grocery store, I have gradually gotten into the mode, which now encompasses the To-Do List, Packing List, Planning List, Major Goals list, etc. as well. I can never turn back, nor do I wish to.

However, it troubles me that my attention span has seemed to grow shorter and shorter in relation to said lists. It happens very rarely that I make a list and keep up with it until everything on it is completed (with the possible exception of Packing Lists, particularly when I'm headed out of the country). On this journal alone, I've posted several lists, most of which I don't even go back to to check off. I even put them here so that I would. So that it would be here, in typewritten words, which are always way more impressive than scraps of paper with scribbled notes on them (even when they're written with a really high-quality pen). I bought my Franklin Covey planner system with Neil, totally intending to turn my life around and keep up with the planner nightly and throughout the work day, as he does. I don't believe I've cracked it since Jan. 13th, and that was only because I hadn't yet replaced the old year's weeks with the new.

I also have this thing with starting projects, then not completing them and moving on to another. I know this isn't a rare situation...but even for the tiniest of things. Like today, I was leaving the apartment to go back to work after swimming, and I slid on the first Merrill shoe. Then I said "Oh, since we're going to Sam's after work, let's make a list!" and raced over to the grocery-list section of our counter and began the list.

With one shoe on. I cannot even complete a stupid task like putting my slip-on shoes on before flitting to get started on the next idea.

Am I just scatterbrained? Short-attention-spanned? I generally get the original project completed...the groceries get put away after I wipe the bathroom counters; the fridge door gets closed after I mark my PBS book mailed in the system...and I didn't go to work half sock-footed today. Maybe I'm just more flighty than I used to be. I should consider that a cute quality, embrace it, and move on.

{I also don't like how a comma can replace the word "that," in some sentences, but it can also be construed by less lingual readers as a run-on sentence (as in, "My mom had so many friends, her funeral was S.R.O"). I'm completely paranoid that it will be misinterpreted and, though I am loath to use extraneous words that don't look pretty (like "that"), I generally put it in there just to be on the safe side. Isn't that silly?}