The Problem With To-Do Lists

It seems this time of year is just crazy busy.  I don't know why it always winds up being a rush to complete a never ending list of tasks each day leading up to the Labour Day Weekend.  The semi-annual sorting of the kids clothes, packing up and freecycling off what they cannot keep and purchasing what's needed.  Making sure they've got what they need for school.  Tearing out the exhausted summer garden and planting for the cooler months.  Canning everything insight.  Sweet corn, carrots, beans, pickles, jams, pie fillings, soups and stews.  Freezing anything that's leftover.  Of course there are the house hold tasks that got put off for cooler weather.  It's time for those now too.

I'm writing this blog today while being forced to slow down for one hour.  I've dragged my laptop to an appointment and hijacked some poor unsuspecting person's wifi network.  If I'm going to sit idle for an hour I'd better have something to keep my hands busy, my mind focused on task so that it doesn't wander too much, start worrying about something.  Come the cooler weather I'll take these hour long, forced breaks to knit.  


So that brings me to the thought.  I now feel guilty for spending any time not consumed with some sort of work.  A very Quaker-like work ethic has sunk in over the last year or two.  If' I'm not burning 1000 calories in exercise, or putting away a year's worth of food it doesn't feel like a day well spent.  Now you'd think that with all this expended energy I'd be as thin as a pencil.  Ha! If that was all it took then I'd have installed the hamster wheel years ago!


Perhaps it's time for me to slow down a little.  A girlfriend wrote on her facebook wall yesterday that she had an empty house and two hours to herself and questioned what she'd do with them.  What floated through my mind was "what not to do with them".  My stupid to-do list.  I should stop writing them.  Once written the demand to be finished.  Some awful self-fulfilling prophecy.


When I die, I'd rather not be remembered by what consumed me but rather what I treasured.