listless
the domestic minx
32 Comments
Do you prepare schedules, listing in point form
the issues you wish to address throughout the week?
Do you employ endless agendums,
itemizing each and every task and function
for imminent completion?
Or do you fly by the seat of your pants, skirting Issues, flouting authority, condemning lists and a decent semblance of order to inevitably whirl like a dervish into dark and unmentionable places?
Like me...
Much to everyone's horror, I don't do lists.
Oh, I've tried. I have endless pads, pens and pertinent paraphernalia at my fingertips. I even have the genes.
My father loved lists. He was a List Maker Extraordinaire.
He assembled them incessantly.
He made inventories of the wood working equipment he would purchase slyly for his shed.
He scheduled with awful regularity the renovation tasks our family would perform, chain gang style, over the weekends.
I even found his list, numbering in point form, the reasons he should stay with his family when pulled towards The Other Woman.
It was a relief to see that I was on the list.
However, it was right down at the bottom with my brother...
One can get overlooked down there, which is precisely what happened in the end.
So why, I wonder...
Why bother writing the list, when you already know?
Is this why I don't like lists?
Is there a primal and subterranean connection with childhood trauma made real in a list? Perhaps there is.
Lists create. Ideas becomes tangible. They solidify and finalize a thought.
They allocate a task. They address an issue and make one accountable. They limit.
They commit.
Avoiding the list has made flying by the seat of my pants an artform.
While this has often been exhilarating, it has also been downright scary,
and unduly messy.
On many occasions, an unnecessary lack of preparation and a fundamental unwillingness to commit to order has been my undoing. A list would have helped.
A schedule, a plan perhaps...
It seems incredulous that, despite this, I spent so many years as a teacher,
writing lesson plans, scheduling minutiae and managing lists so long that my brain hurt.
There were lists within lists, checklists and classlists and lists too tedious to mention. There were agendas for everything and a blueprint for each workable moment. It was an integral part of daily classroom life and with so much to cram into every busy moment, it was essential.
So how exactly does someone who thrives on random deal with routine?
How does a minx deal with monotony?
You will be pleased to hear, dear reader, that I used my powers for good, sort of...
I very carefully built a little irregularity into every day, delicious little aberrations woven gently into the fabric of existing plans and allowed to flourish organically. It was always amazing to see what fabulous creations could be wrought through delicious divergence.
Of course, transformation was made more astonishing by the fact that I am spontaneously obsessive to the point of madness and spent most of my waking hours tweaking a creation in the classroom...
Naturally, there are repercussions when one doesn't follow the rules, make a list,
draw a plan, read the map...
Shit happens. Delicious shit sometimes. Adventurous and unexpected,
leading one on tangents unexpected, paths unprepared, leading spiral and whorling
into wild and wonderful secret gardens along the road less travelled.
So, I don't make lists, and if someone makes one for me I very carefully weave a little deviance, a delicious little aberration, into their fabric and allow the ensuing decadence to flourish organically.
My list making friends cringe. I am both enigma and nemesis.
While I am catalytic and creative, competent and constructive
I am predictably unpredictable.
The fly in the ointment, Hans. The monkey in the wrench. The pain in the ass.
My husband, Man of Lists,
infinitely patient,
eternally forgiving,
looks at me
and shakes his head.
"You're just not a team player." he says.
No, I guess not...
I have my own agenda.
I don't need a list.
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Reader Comments (32)
Minxes don't do lists they do naughty minxy things instead.
Uncle Normans don't do lists either. It is not because we do minxy things, well maybe sometimes we do minxy things, its because we just can't be bothered.
Sorry I missed your 100th post yesterday, I was a little tucked up.
1. must visit minx blog
2. revise need for lists
3. make a cup of tea
4. do nothing today if can help it
I did miss you Uncle Norman darling x
Sorry you are a little tuckered out..
Lists are the Devil, aren't they, and I simply can't be bothered with them either!
xox
Now that's my kind of list Jafabrit!!!
There's plenty of room to move with that one....
I'm glad I'm at the top for a change!!
xox
I am out-of-control with LISTS. I make lists, to make more lists. I am a single mother with a full time job. I have Work lists, and House lists, shopping lists, blog topic lists... it is probably a good thing since if I don't write something down, I forget to do it. I am also way to easily distracted by shiny things, so if I didn't have lists, I could spend an entire day admiring those damn shiny things!
I, Kitty, am a list-maker.
Suffering from attention defecit disorder is not easy, and writing things down quite often becomes a means of ensuring the thought is captured and killed before it flies off.
Like you, though, Minx, I always tend to add a little bit of fun on my list. This is my actual work list from today:
1. Complete "New Faces" marketing campaign
2. Internet research - why do men drink champagne out of women's shoes?
3. Edit University mySpace page
4. Train Student Life employees
5. Nip of whiskey - 10 a.m.
6. Restructure admissions section
7. Go outside for a long walk. Take off shoes while walking.
8. Update blog
9. Call Dad
10. Arrange pedicure
Ok, so maybe my list is more of a personal list. Perhaps I need a handler. Paris Hilton's is more than likely out of work for a bit...
Do grocery lists count? The others are all gathering dust in the boxes that contain the detritus of my career in education. I'd like to say I'm sans boxes as well, but find myself peering into one as I write...
Excellent!
Minxy Dahling!
I like to scribble random things on post it notes and call them lists...but they are futile attempts to appear organized. I promptly lose said notes anyway. Lists don't work for a brain such as mine, that meanders and wanders from task to task often performing several at once. Gestalt thinking I believe it's called. I don't think it possible to make a list that works quite like that If you find anyone who can tell me how to do it, send them my way asap!
I'VE MISSED YOU TERRIBLY! I must sit with a cup of coffee on Thursday and devour every post you've made since my absence.
XOXO
Mistress M
...or is that in my absence?! I'm linguistically challenged today!
ACK!
Love
M
I also seem to be missing a period in my first paragraph...good LORD! What is wrong with me?!
If only I'd made a list of what I was going to say!
Lists would require organization which would turn my world upside down. You see half the fun of living life on the edge is not being too controlling or regimented- that task usually goes to the man in my life.I live my life without knowing what will be around the next corner, not knowing what I will find in a curious little bookshop, and often find myself walking into the store to buy catfood and walking out with 25 items none of them relating to a cat... but that is what makes it fun... I never teach a yoga class knowing what pose will be next... its all off the top of the head as the way life should be.. playing it by ear., making it up as you go along. Its what makes you wonderful dear minx ... Listless bloggers everywhere , unite for we have our new Queen!
xxoo kk
Darling Meleah,
In times of stress, lists have been known to help...
When one is so unbearably busy, they can prioritize and streamline the tasks to avoid confusion.
I tend to exacerbate this type of stress by doing none of the above and ending up - you know...
I have relied on my wits for so long...it's dangerous. Some days I'm catastrophically witless, listless and find myself on someone's hitlist.
xx
Your list is perfect Kitty!
At least you have incorporated some fun into it.
"writing things down quite often becomes a means of ensuring the thought is captured and killed before it flies off."
I love this comment.
But it is a double edged sword, isn't it...
Capturing it on a list means I have committed to it.
Perhaps to it's death.
I like to keep my options open and allow my thoughts to waft freely, seizing them only in my stories and verse.
I'll be thinking of you at 10 am - how glorious!!
xx
Like you, darling Kellypea, my listy existence is "gathering dust in the boxes that contain the detritus of my career in education."
I peer into them too, from time to time, and wonder where my time management skills went - obviously in the same direction as the lists that controlled them...
Grocery lists? I have made them on occasion, only to ignore them or leave them at home. I have gone into a store to buy one thing and left with ten others bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the initial target.
xx
Hello and welcome back, darling Mistress M !!!
Your list making capabilities sound deliciously familiar. I too have employed these methods of allowing myself to appear organized..
I find it hard to work in a linear fashion, my mind too meanders from task to task in a random manner and is infinitely more creative for the circles it spins.
(Which is exactly what you appear to be doing here, Margot!!! ROFLOL - it is Gestalt behaviour in all it's Gestalt Glory!!!)
xox
Darling Kimmykat,
Your delectable mantra sums me up as perfectly as it does you!
How can one live on the edge if everything is ordered and regimented? There is no margin for error, which can be so deliciously misleading and consequential to growth, divergence and adventure.
I love making it up as I go along...
xox
I am Mister List. I am the Listmeister. I am the Master of Lists.
Sometimes the only joy I have is writing my lists and then crossing things off them.
I would have you in order Minx.
i dont do lists.well,unless they look like jafabrit's list up there.i have also tried to do lists but i either stop halfway or i end up with writing the number "one" and stopping there.
im a random,spontaneous,last minute kinda girl.
"Building a little irregularity into every day" would be a paradox for most women, but not for you dear Minx. Like you, I have no use for lists - I simply hire a chimpanzee to remember everything for me.
I dare say you would have a list written out for me too, dear Eddie, aka The Listmeister.
I can assure you there would only be one thing getting cross(ed). Me!!
Do all men like lists?
xx