making lists.

My friend (and fellow Coloradan) Kurt is currently traveling Europe on the same study abroad program that I participated in two years ago. I'm loving his blog for selfish reasons (namely, living vicariously through him and pretending that I'm back on the best semester of my life) but also because Kurt is an incredibly insightful and intelligent human being with very interesting things to say. Go check out his blog - you won't be disappointed.

I like to make lists. Mostly I like them because it helps me to stay organized and to accomplish everything that I need to in any given day. But I also like to make lists because I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment when I cross something off of my list. Example: sophomore year at Westmont, during finals week, I made a to-do list that was four pages long. I taped it up on the window next to my desk and crossed things off with brightly colored markers as I completed them. When the last thing had been crossed off, I had a celebration with my next door neighbor that consisted of dinosaur shaped Ritz crackers, hot chocolate, dancing and watching Friends. It was great. And I'd like to attribute some of that greatness to my list.

Sometimes, though, I am guilty of adding things to my list simply so that I will have something to cross off (example: make a to-do list). This stems from the same part of me that would always write my papers single-spaced so I could go at the end and make them double-spaced and feel really good about the amount of pages I had written.

Today was an add-unneccesary-things-to-the-list kind of day.

(Proof: number 3 on my list reads "write a blog entry about making lists".)

Number 3 is now crossed off. And I'm already feeling more accomplished.