Alone with My List of Things to Do

I talk too much. Actually, the way it expresses itself here is that I type too much. Today is my last Greta Garbo day...my family returns tomorrow. I counted back...it has been at least a decade since I spent all night alone in a residence. I've been in a hotel by myself a couple of times when my husband sent me on a "get-away" but this has been different, no one yelling just outside my bedroom door destroying the illusion of privacy. So now, alone--without anyone to interrupt me or start crying because they "forgot their word" while I was talking--alone like this I ramble on like a blathering idiot, making up for that decade of intermittent breaks in sequential thought.

Three days and nights with no one around. So who am I when no one is in my periphery?

I am a student who gushes essays into cyber space.
I am a minimalist athlete...biking and swimming.
I am a friend on both phone and computer forum.
I am a person who remembers how to entertain myself to the point of sloth.
I don't sleep.
I thought I'd be a cleaner and an organizer, but that ain't happening.
I eat very little, but pretty healthy.
I've basked in the glory of self-appointed activity, but...
...I continue to feel guilty about the things I've not accomplished these few days...

I guess I should now stop whining about this ethereal List of Things I'd get done if I only had the time. I've had three days and nothing on the List is done. Maybe part of me wants an unfinished list...but why? To have cause to wrap up in that scratchy blanket of familiarity called "you're a failure"? Bah. Maybe it is to have something to live for, to keep me waking up the next day. But that reason for the List is even more depressing. So bah to that, too. Maybe, just maybe...shoot, I lost it. I had a really profound reason for the List, too...oh yeah...power. If it is there and I can refuse to do it, then I am the one making the decisions and the work and the obligation are not driving me. (Whew, glad I was able to retrieve that one.) So I guess the purpose of the List is not so much what is on it as the fact that it exists at all, probably for all of the reasons above but mostly the last one. In the words of my oldest son, spoken when he was but five and not feeling so powerful: "At least I'm the boss of my coat." I'm with you, son, at least I'm the boss of my List.

I'll relinquish my list to God tomorrow. Well, I'll relinquish it today, but I'll talk about it tomorrow. For today, I've already talked enough.