Lists

Some people read the newspaper every day. Personally, I find the newspaper utterly depressing, so I try to limit myself to once a week or so. Instead, I read people's blogs. This serves several purposes. First, if anything crazy important happens in the world and I'm managed to utterly isolate myself from society, I can find out about it from their page. Second, I love reading people's thoughts as they come out in really genuine ways. It's difficult to blog pretentiously. I mean, I suppose it could be done. But for the most part blogging comes out as a sneak peak into someone's brain and while I'm an introvert and don't always feel up to TALKING to people all the time, I'm pretty much always up for peaking inside someone's brain.

You know, that sounded less weird before I typed it.

Anyway, one of my favorite blogs is snowandmist.blogspot.com The woman who writes it is someone I went to college with and she's a teacher right now in Alaska, at the top of the world (are you hearing the Iceroad Truckers Announcer guy? "at the top of the world..." ahem. OKay. Moving on.). I love her thoughts on village life in Alaska, faith, and the frustrations of being a teacher. Not that being a teacher is ever frustrating.

Haha. Moving on again...

The post of hers I read today mentioned how much she loves making lists and I was nodding in agreement the whole time I read her thoughts on this. Making lists is awesome. I make them for several reasons.

1. Keep track of what I need to do.

2. Make myself feel better about what I've done. (This I call the retroactive list. I make a list of all the things I've done and then cross them all off like a retroactive to-do list. It's super satisfying.)

3. Figure out what's in my brain when it feels like mush.

4. Prioritize.

5. Brainstorm ideas for something.

It's interesting that I'm a list maker (in case you wanted a peak into my interesting brain here...) because I'm not that organized of a person. My desk at school is covered in several stacks of papers. I know what they all are, but I'm sure it looks like a nightmare to anyone who walks in the room. Even my seemingly organized file drawer is labeled with folders like "important info" that I can throw random stuff into without figuring out where else it could go.

How about you? Are you a list maker? An organizer?

I have no idea why it's so important that I express these list-making thoughts today. Maybe because I was in a rare organizational mood today? I cleaned my desk at home and hubby's desk too, and they look pretty good if I say so myself. However, there's now a huge pile of papers on the floor in my office nook that needs to be thrown in the trash. But we're out of trash bags because who can remember to buy those at the grocery store? So for now it sits on the floor. Do you think this counteracts the impressiveness of the fact that my desk has never looked better?

Hm. Something to ponder.

PS. Book reviews--several of them. Coming soon! Up next is Firethorn by Ronie Kendig. I read it months ago and no joke, it was so amazing I've been processing it this whole time because there's really no way words could convince you of how awesome this book is (oh the irony). So be excited. But I have to stop typing now or I'm going to steal my thunder.