Angela Natividad's Live & Uncensored!

28 April 2016

A Potentially Incomplete List of Things I Keep Lists Of


  1. Tasks, organised by type (freelance, personal life, money owed, money loaned, etc. Long-term projects get their own special separate lists)
  2. Shopping list
  3. Things to pack for a given trip
  4. Talking points for given events... or just to have a handle on what I want to say if I have my hand raised
  5. Things I'd like to watch, and who referred them
  6. Things I might read, and who referred them
  7. Books I've read—the longest list running in terms of seniority. I think it's about six years old?
  8. Shows I'm currently watching and have completed, plus notes on who referred them and how I generally feel about them
  9. Articles or stories I'd like to write
  10. Articles or stories written on a given day, and the word count (20.000 words at MIP alone!)
  11. People I hang out with (full name, current job title, date, location, what we discussed, photo)
  12. Things I may like to buy—a list I often forget about, but that's by design. When I open the list again, sometimes years later, I buy the thing if I still want it and the timing is right. Or I delete it, because it's otherwise taking up room on the list
  13. Potentially cool book ideas
  14. Potentially cool business ideas
  15. Patterns I'd like to knit—possibly my youngest list
  16. Things to be grateful for—not often updated, but generally updated in times of duress. It's a good exercise
  17. People to buy presents for, and/or presents to buy people, and why 
I think that's everything, but I can't really be sure. Written out like this, it seems a bit manic. But the funny thing about lists is that they become religions, planets around which I orbit, gravitational anchors to keep from spinning into chaos.

It's possible that I do this because, like marketing people frenetically counting Likes, it's an easy way to mark progress. And maybe at some point, these small demarcations of a life will yield a deeper thing I'm trying to keep track of but can't quite put a finger on. 

That's about all I have to say about lists.