Words by Terryl

Words are powerful carriers of emotion and information, gravid with meaning. They can enchant or curse, wound or heal. Words can convey deep passions, lofty ideas, and aching beauty. Words can lift us up to great heights, or dash us on the rocks. Words matter. A lot.

At the mundane end of the word power gradient is that they aid memory. Burdened with poor memory my whole life, I have also been burdened with a broad spectrum of lists. Words that help me keep track of myself about everything from what I need at the grocery store to the things I need to get done.

I was nurtured in a family with a cast-iron work ethic. It was pounded into me from the cradle that my job was to do what my employer needed so long as it was legal and ethical. When my boss at the Inn said “We need you to step up to a management position to save our sinking ship,” brighter people would have asked questions. Questions like “Why is our ship sinking, and what do you suppose can I do about it?”

But I wasn’t that bright. I asked my boss for a to-do list, and stepped up.

The to-do list outstripped my calendar in short order.

Fresh from college as I was that first time I got the S. O. S. call I couldn’t let go of the 3-ring notebook that had, by then, become my habitual connection to my time. My first professional calendar (aka list of things to do) was an 8 ½ x 11 3-ring leather notebook with assorted pockets and pen loops. It zipped closed and fit in my canvas courier bag. New calendar years could be added with an easy snap of the rings. It was outward evidence of a tidy mind running a tight ship. I was young then and working long hours. I kept track of everything from orders to accounting to employee performance reviews to the list of things I needed to do in that binder. The calendar/list was adequate to the task, as was I.

As the years passed and my responsibilities increased, my large-format binder became stuffed with business cards, phone messages, bank statements, employee crises, customer crises, and notes from a thousand different sources about a thousand minor emergencies requiring my immediate attention.

The sticky note had been invented by then. God curse the god-cursed things. With them, my work tasks had escaped the list. Anybody could walk in willy nilly and put sticky notes any old where and completely reprioritize my carefully organized work day.

The sticky note delusion is that, because it’s written on a small piece of paper, it’s a small job. I got sticky notes that said things like:

My list of things to do had acquired a third dimension—depth. Only the newest was on top now, not the most important. My list of things to do did me little good when, by the time I worked my way down to it through the god-cursed sticky notes, it was too late. I would discover things on the list like: ‘Next year’s budget. Due Friday,’ Crap. This is Friday.

“Um, Boss?”

“Yes.”

“You know that budget meeting we have scheduled for this afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I need to reschedule. I need another week.”

“I already gave you a week, what happened?”

“Becky’s kid broke her arm.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Well, my budget project got buried under twenty sticky notes about it and I had to write a new schedule and pull a couple of her shifts myself.”

Not cool. Not professional. Not competent.

The degeneration of the 8 ½ x 11 3-ring calendar was merely outward evidence of my internal disarray. I was overextended, multitasking beyond my capacity, and developing a nasty case of workaholism which is a very real and very debilitating disease that wrecked both my home life and managerial competency.

I got the S.O.S. call three times in my professional life. Once in hospitality, once at MVD, and once in auto parts. I was stupid enough to step up all three times. Only the list remained the same. Everything else changed as I tried, repeatedly, to train myself for my career du jour.

By the time I abandoned the 3-ring, it would no longer fit in my courier bag and nor would it zip closed. I carried it clutched to my chest, scattering business cards and sticky notes in my wake like a breadcrumb trail I might hope to find my way back home by. Back to organized, adequate time. Back to proficiency, Back to sanity. I’d sneak in and out of work with it, scared that the boss would see and know my shameful secret: that I was in over my head.

I moved into a smaller calendar. One of those little spiral jobs with inspirational sayings that inundate bookstores starting in about June. I got much better at making and keeping appointments because no more information than the appointment itself would fit in the small calendar blocks. There were no pockets for stuffing notes and business cards into and I threatened my staff with dire consequences if they were to so much as think of putting a sticky note or phone message on it. My to-do list became a separate item then. I kept it on a steno notebook which was conveniently about the same size as the new calendar. They stacked well.

I had entered a lower circle of hell, I just didn’t know it yet.

I wasn’t as young or as confident in my abilities by then, but I still labored under that well-polished and deeply ingrained work ethic. The last thing I would do each day before I left work was check my calendar for the next day’s appointments and write my list of things to do on the steno pad.

I assured myself, my staff, and my boss that the rest of that unstructured business manager work that bled my time away with business cards and phone messages and customer complaints and employee problems would have to wait until I was done with the list. The list came first.

The new system looked a lot better, and fit in my courier bag again.

It was a lie.

I deluded myself that writing the task on a to-do list constituted starting work on the task in some way.

Although I could let my boss see me and my list again without shame, mine was not a tidy mind and I was not running a tight ship.

It was a short-lived lie.

I had an overblown estimation of my abilities. By now my workaholism was so far advanced I really did think I could work miracles, and that I could perform them on demand multiple times a day every day. So did everybody I worked with.

My to-do list proved us all wrong every day. No matter how many hours I worked I had to leave work with many of the expected miracles, and the list, uncompleted. I started spending most of my list-making time at the end of the day copying over what I hadn’t got done that day. Pretty soon it was what I didn’t get done that day and the day before. Then what I didn’t get done that day, the day before, and the week before. Eventually my list said things like “see March 22.” Not too bad, I thought, that was just last week. I’d flip back to March 22, though, and it would say “see March 10th.” I’d flip to March 10th and it would say “see February 25th.” And so on.

Ultimately there were ancient tasks—many of which were marked urgent—over a year old on my to-do list. Even tasks with multiple asterisks and written in bright colors overlaid with highlighter to indicate their importance and urgency remained undone. Abandoned. Opportunities lost.

That was decades ago. I’m the boss now and I work at home. While there are many wonderful things about working at home, the down side is that the dissolution of the to-do list is now complete. The list of what I need to do is no longer confined to a single location, much less a single steno pad. It’s everywhere. My to-do list covers every flat surface in my home. I still work diligently but there is no meaningful distinction now between work and life.

Lists torment me everywhere. There are lists of errands I need to run. Phone calls I need to make, grocery lists, books I’d like to read and movies I’d like to see (often enough making their way onto my list by way of reading a list of someone else’s favorite books and movies on the internet). The poor memory I started out with is getting worse. I forget to do things—even the obvious—unless I write them down. I forget to make an appointment during business hours to get my hair cut even though it’s gotten so long it irritates me every minute of the day. There are stacks of lists for work by my computer. I will find a list of books I’m interested in stacked with the grocery lists in the kitchen. There are lists of things I want to remember to tell people, ideas for things I’d like to craft or cook, lists of memorable quotes, things I want to remember to look up, stories I want to write. Lists to remind me to unplug chargers and get the laundry out of the dryer. There are lists written on the back of other lists. I haven’t devolved to the point where I write lists of lists—yet—but that dread day must surely follow.

Lists are traps, too. I get stuck there. I write ingredients on the grocery list from a recipe I want to try and buy the ingredients even if I can’t remember what I wanted to make because I can no longer find the list the recipe was on.

Although on the principle of the thing I once swore I would never allow god-cursed sticky notes into my life, I use them now because my list requires another dimension. The vertical. If it’s really important, really really important—so important I can’t afford for it to get lost in the chaos of all the other lists—it has to be on a vertical surface at eye level. A mirror, a cabinet door, or a computer screen.

I can go out in public again with a neat, orderly appearance of competence and organization. But it’s still a lie. Nobody in meetings now knows about the lists or the internal bedlam they reflect. They might even think I’m a tidy mind running a tight ship. God forbid anyone should find out I really can’t walk on the water. That I never could.

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Terryl Warnock is an eccentric with a happy heart who lives on the outskirts of town with her cat. She is known as an essayist, proof reader, editor, maker of soap, and proud pagan. A lifetime student, she has pursued science, religion, and sustainable communities. This, plus life experience from the local community service to ski instructor, from forest service worker to DMV supervisor, from hospitality to business owner gives her a broad view on the world.

Terryl is the author of:
The Miracle du jour, ISBN-10: 0989469859, ISBN-13 ‏: ‎ 978-0-9894698-5-2

AJ Brown, in a past life, was an embedded systems engineer (digital design engineer). He worked on new product designs from hard disk controllers, communication protocols, and link encryptors to battery monitors for electric cars.

A few years ago he surrendered his spot on the freeway to someone else. Now he is more interested in sailing, building out his live-in bus for travel, and supporting the idea of full-circle food: the propagation, growth, harvest, storage, preparation, and preservation of healthy sustenance. He is a strong supporter of Free/Libre Open Source Software[F/LOSS] and is willing to help most anyone in their quest to use it.

Together, we are MoonLit Press where words and images matter.