Listing slightly to the left...

Recently I talked about buying stuff to put my stuff in.  Apparently I am not alone in this.  There are others out there who love to buy stuff.  And love to buy stuff to put their stuff in.  It’s good to have other to share your idiosyncrasies with.

I figured I’d throw another one of my weird habits out there in hopes for more random camaraderie.  That’s a fun word, right?  Camaraderie.  It looks really weird when you write it out, though.  I thought it would be spelled with an “o” like comrade…  Wow…off topic much?  Anyway…

So…I make lists.  Seriously…I make a list for everything.  If I go on a trip, I make a packing list.  If I go to the grocery store, I make a grocery list.  If I have a lot of things to do, I make a list of them.  I’m just this side of making a list to keep up with my lists.  I love lists!!! 

Making a list makes everything you have to do seem so…doable.  As if you could take the list and simply go and do those things one by one and check them right off.  And on the rare occasion that I actually break out those lists and do the things one by one…it’s extraordinarily gratifying to check each item off.  I like to draw a line through the things I’ve done so that I can see the progress.

I think I get this habit from my mom.  She’s a list maker too.  Any time we decide to have an event, she will whip out a notepad and a pen and make a list.  “What we need”. “Who is doing what”. “Who is invited”.  Things like that.  So I guess I come by this naturally.  I also get my severe obsession with pens and paper from her.  She’s the only person I know who actually may have more pens and paper around than I do.

Recently, we moved to a house and boy did I have lists.  I had a list of things I needed.  I had a list of things I needed to do.  I had a list of things I wanted vs. things I actually needed.  I had a list of places to find the things I wanted and needed.  I carried them all around in my purse so I could refer to them if necessary.  Heaven forbid I ever dropped them.  I’d feel so stupid if someone picked them up and saw my dorky lists.

When I planned my wedding…it was nothing BUT lists.  I had a list of things to do…things to buy…things we needed for each part of the wedding…a list of contacts…a list of duties…lists of people…lists of events…lists of everything.  Well…except a list of my lists.  I still have not gone far enough off the deep end for that.  I probably will.  Some day.

Wait a minute.  I just realized something.  This blog makes lists of my lists.  DAMN!  It’s official…I’m crazy.  At least I’m not listless.  ::gong::

I suppose that the funniest part of all this list making is that I rarely actually follow the list I made.  Instead of looking at the list…I just do stuff.  When I go out of town…instead of looking at my packing list, I just go start throwing stuff in the bag.  In the grocery store, I just go down every aisle and grab what I think I need.  All willy nilly and such-like.  Sometimes I’ll still cross things off the list before I throw it away, though.  It makes me feel accomplished.

I like to think that while I do not necessarily use the list as a list is intended to be used…making the list helps me to organize things in my brain and retain information.    Writing things down has always helped me remember things even if I don’t keep the paper I wrote it on.  So maybe that’s it…just the act of writing it out is how I organize my head and keep things straight.

Either way…I will most likely die with a list in my purse or my pocket.  People will go through my things after my death and find little lists on sticky notes and cute note paper stuffed all through my things.  They will likely shake their heads and laugh.  With a sigh, they will wistfully say, “That crazy Lynn…always making lists of stuff.”

Then they will go home and start making a list of all the funny things they remember about that crazy Lynn.  It will be a really fun list.