I am currently suffering from list-overload. I can’t remember where I wrote what down, when it’s due or what list it’s on. Heck, I don’t even remember how many lists I’ve created in the past couple of days. Although my efforts to stay on top of my daily tasks are quickly vanishing amongst a multitude of little pieces of paper - and I’m afraid I might not recover - my list-love stays strong.

My fixation with list-making started at a young age. I would use those brightly colored, K-shaped Post-it notes to organize to my heart’s content. The genesis: chore lists and packing lists. Slowly these elementary attempts at structure evolved in breadth and complexity. With detailed accounts of exact Christmas gifts to purchase for my family with exact prices and exact locations, I would have won child multitasker of the year if the award existed. My lists began as a way to form a plan of action. They taught me to prioritize and then work productively to complete both the important and menial deeds of a normal day.

But somewhere along the way, the meaning and reasoning for those pages of yellow highlighter and scratched-out abbreviations has changed. No longer do I make lists in order to complete a task, but instead I have begun to make lists in order to escape from even beginning a task. Hence the list-overload.

And it’s just getting worse. Sometimes I am tempted to jot a few notes down on my hand with no intention of getting to them in the near future. My fear is I am going to soon become a huge, walking to-do list - perhaps this will work to my advantage because of the attention the large amount of permanent marker on my skin will bring; but those odds don’t seem great. I want to return to the time where I was organized but not overly confined; prioritized but not over-committed. I want to feel the satisfaction that comes from the squeak of blue highlighter (for where else can you use blue highlighter but in a to-do list) over the finished and perfected name of something I had to work for.

I have hope that this current state of surplus sticky notes will end, however. This hope comes first in completing this column and the small encouragement I will receive in marking it off my daily list of tasks. But more importantly, I refuse to become slave to the lists because no matter their number nor length, at the end of the day, I have much to be thankful for and much to look forward to that can be neither planned nor recorded on any notepad.