I found a list in a notebook back in July, dated the first week of January, titled simply this year, with six items under it written in a hand that looked more determined than my handwriting usually looks. I read through it standing in the hallway and felt a strange, specific kind of embarrassment, the sort that comes from encountering a more organized version of yourself from several months ago.
The list was sensible. Walk most mornings. Finally sort the photographs. Call my sister more. Fix the fence, which I did do, though not for any of the reasons on the list, more because Wanda finally shamed me into it with her ongoing commentary. Learn to make bread. Spend less time on my phone in the evenings.
What I Actually Did Instead
Looking back over the months since January, I did walk sometimes, but not most mornings, more like most weeks, and usually not for the reasons of health or discipline the list implied, more because I happened to be out anyway and kept going a little longer than planned. The photographs are still unsorted, a whole separate piece I’ve already written about that ended exactly where you’d expect it to end, which is nowhere.
I did learn to make bread, sort of, badly, which I’ve also already written about, so at least one item got crossed off in some rough form. I have not called my sister more. If anything I think I’ve called her less, though I can’t say exactly why, since nothing specific happened between us to explain the drift. And the phone thing, I don’t even want to get into how that’s gone, except to say the list clearly did not solve it.
Why the List Didn’t Work
I’ve tried to think honestly about why writing something down in January, with what felt like real intention at the time, produced so little actual change by summer. I don’t think it’s that the goals were unreasonable. None of them were especially ambitious. I think it’s more that a list like this assumes a version of a year that doesn’t actually exist, a steady, linear progression where you simply decide something in January and then do it, week after week, until it’s done.
That’s not how the months actually went. There were weeks that got eaten up by nothing in particular, weeks where a neighbor’s memory started slipping and that took up more of my attention than any list item did, weeks where the garden needed something urgent that wasn’t on the list at all. The list assumed a kind of empty, cooperative time that I don’t think I’ve ever actually had.
What I Did That Wasn’t on the List
Reading back through the months, I did plenty of things that weren’t written down anywhere in January because I had no way of knowing they’d happen. I sat on my porch through a six hour power outage with half the street. I bought a chipped bowl from an estate sale for reasons I still can’t fully explain. I ended up in an unplanned water balloon skirmish with the kids across the street. None of that was on any list, and all of it, looking back, mattered more to how the year actually felt than most of what was.
What I’m Doing With the List Now
I didn’t rewrite it or start a new one. I thought about it, briefly, the impulse to make a fresh list for the second half of the year, more realistic this time, better calibrated to how my actual days go. I decided against it. I think what the list taught me, if it taught me anything, is that my life doesn’t move in the direction I plan for it in January, and there’s not much use pretending a second list would fare any better than the first.
What I Kept From It
I tore the page out of the notebook, actually, and put it in the drawer with the greeting cards I never sent, which felt like the right company for it. Not thrown away entirely, but not left where I’d keep seeing it and feeling that same small embarrassment every time I flipped past it. Some things, I’ve decided, are better filed away than either finished or forgotten.
What I Told My Sister About It
I finally did call my sister, actually, not because the list finally got me there but because I felt a little guilty describing the list item to her directly and admitting I hadn’t followed through on it. She laughed when I told her, said she’d made a similar list back in January herself, with an item about calling me more, which neither of us had managed either. We ended up talking for almost an hour, longer than either of us had planned, mostly about nothing important, which felt like exactly the kind of call the list had been trying to engineer in the first place, except it happened because of an offhand confession instead of any discipline on my part.
I’ve decided that might be how most of my list items eventually get done, if they get done at all. Not through steady effort applied in January, but through some sideways route months later that has almost nothing to do with the original plan.
I checked the phone thing off the list too, in a manner of speaking, though not through discipline either. I dropped my phone in the sink while washing dishes one evening in June and it stopped working for about a week while I waited on a replacement part, and that unplanned week without it turned out to be closer to what the January list actually wanted for me than any deliberate effort could have managed. I’m not about to recommend sink accidents as a strategy. But it’s worth noting that the goal got met anyway, sideways, the same as everything else on that list apparently prefers to happen.