Close the Board Room Closet

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When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else—we are the busiest people in the world. – Eric Hoffer

I don’t remember ever being this busy. Not even that time in the fourth grade when I was starring as Johnny Appleseed in our class play, learning to play the autoharp, and simultaneously creating my report on Missouri, the “Show Me” state, in a cardboard box panorama (I believe the Latin term for it is“Cardboardorama®”). Remember that fantastic technology? Those stories drawn on long paper rolled between two dowels inside a box decorated to look like a TV set? It was like watching the merry history of those stubborn Missourians unfurl before your very eyes.

Now, many years later, I’m scaring myself and small children with my to-do lists. On Saturday, my head exploded. Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but my eyes defi nitely did bulge out a bit at the sheer enormity of all the things I need to do, the things falling through the cracks, things halfway done with no time to fi nish them because we’re off and running to the next happy thing; then there are the things I forgot to do (Meglet, if you’re reading this, I hope you had a fantastic birthday, girlfriend! You too, Lora!). It was bound to happen, this spontaneous combustion. I knew life was at Orange Alert level when I wasn’t sending thank you notes in a Timely Fashion.  

I could finally stand it no longer, this Angst of Overwhelm.  

So I cleared the sidewalk chalk and cheerful biography of Poincaré off the dining room table and sat down by myself with a nice fountain pen and a legal pad, one with satisfyingly thick sheets where the ink says “ahhhhh” as it glides on. And I sat and wrote and wrote and wrote, like writer Malcolm Lowry on a drunken binge under a volcano but without the worm at the bottom of the tequila bottle and without all the sweat he used to sweat. But I didn’t stand up to write like he did (before he inevitably fell down), so maybe it isn’t the best comparison.

I wasn’t writing the Great American novel, no. I was just writing my to-do list. Not in any theme or priority, just listing page after page of all I needed to do.