My terribly generous Secret Santa gave me a cube of Post-It Notes for one of my gifts this year. I’ve been saving them for the summer, knowing it was likely I’d once again be turning my refrigerator door into a summer To-Do list. In the past I’ve organized my summer tasks and sorted them by color. I have five colors to work with this year, but I’m not sure how to categorize things.
One color will have to be devoted to procrastination jobs, the kinds of things that really need to get done and I always put off until the summer because there’s more time: getting the light above the kitchen sink fixed, cleaning out the garage, going to that dentist appointment that doesn’t require taking a half day off and calling a substitute, getting the oil changed and tires rotated.
But what about the other four?
Do I list the books I want to read or the movies I want to see? That kind of makes them feel like homework assignments, and ones that aren’t so hard to accomplish if I’m planning on doing them anyway.
Do I set the paces for long-term goals? How many trips to the Y each week? How many words written or pages revised daily? How much time spent each day practicing my new guitar? These ideas make me wonder how much I want to set myself into a full routine when I’ve been looking forward to having so many wide open days ahead of me.
Should I list school-related projects? I always intend to do some because the end of one school year seems like an exceptionally fertile time when it comes to thinking of ideas I want to try implementing when the next one starts, but I know myself too well. Truly ambitious school projects simply won’t get done in the summer.
When I start planning out my summer fridge list. I always think back to a kindergarten teacher I know who once said she was starting her summer break with one goal in mind — figuring out the perfect recipe for a strawberry daiquiri. She told people this like it was the punchline to a joke, but I really think she meant to do it. To me, it seemed like a near-perfect summertime goal (at least for someone who really liked strawberry daiquiris). It wasn’t so ambitious that there would be a lot of room to fail. It would leave her with plenty of time to just enjoy the slowly passing days. She’d have some fun with it, no matter what, and probably would have something to show for it at the end.
This year, turning 50 sits in my head a little. I was given a pretty landmark gift for a landmark birthday -- a brand new electric guitar. I love the guitar and have always felt a hole in my life from not knowing how to really play it, and 50 seems like a great age to finally dive in to something like that. Why wait longer, you know? What could I be missing out on that I don’t even know I’m missing out on? Who knows how much time any of us have left to do the things we’d like to try?
Maybe one of my Post-It color categories should be used to list personal challenges or new experiences. Not a bucket list so much because I imagine I have at least a few more years left in me, but things I haven’t tried before, because maybe it’s never even occurred to me to try them. What better time to do things like this when I get a blessed seventy-nine days off from work?
Now it’s just a matter of thinking up what should go on that list.
No comments:
Post a Comment