lists

School started on Wednesday for me. Back to school days are long and very full. I am glad to be back in the grind. 

Today, Saturday, is not a day of rest, but rather, a chance to catch up. Maybe.

My to-do list has spawned to-do lists of its own. 

Major categories for the day:

• Update the staff directory with newest editions
• Dismissal tags
• Labels
• Envelopes
• Backpack tags
• Double check the list of students
• Beginning teachers
• Paperwork ready to distribute
• Agenda for first meeting
• Meeting dates
• Calendar updates
• Parents
• Staff
• maintenance request for the leg that fell of that table while I was wheeling it down the hall
• Bits and pieces of meetings to prep

Those are just the parts held in my head, which is better organized than my list. My head-list also happens to be woefully incomplete. The filing cabinets of my head have the right materials, but I can only open so many drawers at a time before the drawers fall out and make a mess. 

How do you keep up with what you have to do? 

I usually keep that info in a notebook, but I ran out of room on the allotted pages. There’s still a bit of space on them but not enough to group and regroup. Write and reconsider. List and sub list.

Maybe I should move to my iPad and just carry it with me everywhere. I’ve tried to do that before and it’s truly less than satisfying even in it’s efficiency. Periodically, I try again using some amazing notebook app. It just doesn’t feel real. And there’s the crazy fact that I can’t keep my glasses on my head or my phone in my pocket. How many things can I plan to lose track of in a day and stay sane?

There is also something uniquely gratifying to holding a pen in my hand. To doodle. To consider synonyms. To understand overlaps and relationships. To scratch through or check off a completed task. To finding one hidden amongst all the others. 

At the crossroads between pen/paper and technology. They both have merits yet are terribly incomplete on their own.