The List

I'm a list maker, I love lists.

I love ticking boxes, it gives me a sense of accomplishment. Like somehow all the things I manage to get done in the course of a day are only really acknowledged if I can see them on paper.

Like most women my 'to do list' is a mile long and it never gets any shorter. You take something off and you add a couple more. It's never ending. It's wearing and at times it gets to me. It sits mocking you, you imagine that you're the only one with a list which can never be completed. You start to feel inferior and lacking because you're struggling with the weight of it.

Then something occurs to me to save me at that point of drowning... it's the realisation that I wrote the list. I'm the one who keeps adding and taking away. I'm the one in charge and the only one who sees it.

The other thing that occurs to me is that there isn't just one list, there's several.

There's the 'have to' list, the 'want to' list, the 'wish to'...

Sure the wish to list is full of my ever changing dreams, but since when is my life governed by the things I have to do rather than the things I want to do. Yes of course there are set things that are no fun but have to get done, but those are the things I get through as fast as humanly possible to make space for all the living I want to do - except that seems to have stalled lately and there is far far too much running to stand still.

I want to make things for the children, for my home and for myself before we pass the time in which we can actually use them or still want them.

I want to do all the silly, fun things I can with my children before they leave this phase far behind.

I want to enjoy the small, the everyday, the now of my life and I want to reclaim some of the space in this crazy life for my own needs, and the wants which are purely about me. I don't actually know what they are yet, but driving didn't get done until the want was forced to become a need, the successful online business didn't happen until our finances needed me to make it happen, and moving out of London had to become a need before that happened. So I guess I need to know what it is I really want for me, not family or children, me.

For every 3 items I add to my 'have to list', I'm going to add 1 to my want list, and then I'm going to figure out how to make them happen.