Nothing Due Today

A life organized around a to-do list takes the joy out of living. There's always stuff to do, obviously: somebody has to wash the dishes, sweep, go grocery shopping, get that cabinet door fixed. The problem is not the to-do list itself. It's the timing of tasks. I tend to do things whenever the stars and my brain chemistry get aligned and I actually want to do them. When I was living alone, dishes tended to pile up, laundry got unmanageable, the fridge was empty and I had to push things over on the table to make space to sit down to eat. Then, on a random morning, my mind was right and I powered through it all and left the place spotless. Suddenly there were no 'tasks', it was all joy. Those weren't days where I finally became responsible. They were days where doing things actually felt good. It probably started as an ADHD thing, but after almost fifty years, it's just part of who I am: If I have to do something, I don't want to. And that "I don't want to" becomes extremely hard to…