If you know me, you know I love a good To Do List (yes, it must be capitalized!). I'm particularly fond of Remember The Milk which is an online To Do List I can access from home, school, or anywhere I happen to be doing things. I have many different tasks on my list - mundane tasks like "clean the litter-box" and "grade spelling test #11" (Oh, the grading! I feel like Sisyphus!) to important tasks like "call county re receipt of property tax".
Why am I telling you this?
Because one item on my To Do List, repeated as a weekly task, was "blog". And I noticed something. It became a job, not a hobby. It was something to check off (and don't get me wrong, I get immense pleasure from checking things off most of the time), but it had become a chore. Chores, if you know me, are not all that fun! But there it would be..."blog"...staring at me from the computer screen as I thought madly of something to type. Then...I'd postpone the task. And the task would come back to haunt me the next day. Soon I had postponed it enough that I had TWO "blog" tasks staring at me. I told myself: it will help me keep up my resolution to blog weekly. I told myself: it will keep me accountable. But what it did was take the fun out of the act of blogging! This, I told myself, just won't do!
And so, I've deleted "blog" from my To Do List. I'm also deleting tasks that remind me to call or email friends - and yes, I had some. For goodness sake, I shouldn't need a reminder! I'm not that batty (yet). I should just call or email when I feel the urge! And if I call at an inopportune time, I hope that friend lets my call go to voice mail with the knowledge that I thought of them, without a reminder, without having it on my To Do List.
And this blog? Maybe it won't get updated every week, and I am going to accept that. But as I reclaim this blog for fun, for ramblings, instead of as a chore, I wonder if ideas for posts will fly into my head and through my fingers,and I can't wait to find out. I hope you'll find out with me.
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