Lists Make Me Happy

This may sound insane and scary to other people, but I bet Chris understands it.

I am doing a decent job of my happiness project, but it results in a disorganized scattering of waaaay too many notebooks and scraps of paper and Post-It notes. The problem is, even though I carry a zillion things with me everywhere I go because I am a bag lady, I never have the right notebook or folder with me at the time I need it. I think of an idea for the newsletter when I’m at the front desk. I hear a new word or song lyrics I want to look up when I’m driving. I think of the right wording for something when I only have my Lost notebook with me. The next time a bear rips off my arm, I’m getting a fake arm with a compartment that can hold ONE notebook and small pen.

I think I have a ridiculous solution that won’t work for anyone else but sounds crazy fun to me if I could manage it.

I need to make a list of everything in my life I’m wanting to keep lists of right now. So far, I have:
Daily delightful things
Positive R things
Food journal
Songs for R and other friends (I never make CDs because I can never find the random jottings of songs I wanted to use)
Books, music, movies I hear about that I want to look into more, or that I’d like to recommend on here maybe (this one is pretty broad; I haven’t figured out the natural focus of it yet)
Stuff I want to follow up on or learn about (words I heard but don’t know, my desire to learn ballet)
Stuff I want to expound on later for a blog posting or tweet, or to meditate on (quotes)

Currently, I keep notes on all these things, but they are scattered among many notebooks, making it impossible for me to track them or USE them. The delightful things often end up in the online delight blog, but usually not for several days after I wrote them down, which misses the point of experiencing those positive things as they occur.

The second step (after focusing that list of lists *squee!*) is to buy nearly identical notebooks but of different colors (Nice notebooks that I will WANT to write in, little hardback journals with colorful spines, probably.), one for each subject. Those are to be filed somewhere appropriate in the house.

The third step is to carry a purse-sized notebook everywhere I go. Only the one. This will require much mindfulness to not leave it sitting at home or at work or leave my bag anywhere. Maybe I could get a thigh strap to hold a notebook and pen and only wear skirts and scuba gear everywhere so I could access it easily. I want to keep THIS book basically unstructured with the exception of writing the date when I start the day.

The fourth step is the ritual. Choose a time every evening to sit down with the notebooks and transcribe into them from the general ledger notebook. (OMG, this is giving me chills of delight from when I was in accounting.) It feels like there is little point to writing all this crap down, taking all the notes I take, if I am not going to meditate on them ever again.

And the last thing is to remember I don’t have to write EVERYTHING down. If I have to let go of some things while I’m driving, well, there will be something else soon enough in the day if I am mindful. When I was in junior high and high school I had what was probably a minor form of hypergraphia where I literally had to write every little thought or word or sight down. It truly hurt to think of the eternal oblivion into which thoughts disappeared if they were not transcribed. I realized the problem and stopped writing anything down. Yes, one extreme to another. I will find that balance or I will not. In any case, it’s silly to deny my nature. I want to record things and read them later. It brings me joy. But to be healthy, I need to learn to let some of it go.

I have also found that I feel less stress with this stuff if I don’t FORCE myself to follow rules that don’t really have purpose. When doing the 365 project, much mediocrity was created by the simple fact that I didn’t have time to design a fantastic photo every single day. In addition, I added crazy amounts of unnecessary stress by staying up so freakin late to obtain perfection or by being wholly disappointed in the crap I finally had to post just to follow the rules. I gained SIGNIFICANT benefits from that project, and don’t regret a single moment of it, but it did teach me that it’s pretty unrealistic (for me, anyway) to think I will be able to truly obtain the “letting go” aspect of happiness that I’m going for if I subscribe to strict, unbendable rules. At the same time, to be me, I have definitely got to have some self-imposed structure or I just won’t do it. I really am about discipline. And about adding steps where there need be none. I love that.

I feel like what I’ve done so far has been worthwhile. Keeping the lists at all, even if disorganized, is giving in to doing what I love, and is not hurting anyone. I think if I can structure it according to the ways that feel natural for me, I could really gain a lot from trying it.

I also thought, in addition to, or even instead…keep the one notebook but then just transcribe it here, exactly as it was written, just because it’s interesting to see what was interesting that day all together. But then there’s that pressure to perform, so I probably won’t do that unless it’s a pretty cool eclectic list. We shall see on that one…