The Obsession That Ate My To Do List

I sacrificed everything

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

This is what I wanted to do two weeks ago while cat sitting for friends.

For full disclosure, I offer my end-of week progress report. I fully admit that this list was somewhat ambitious. On the other hand, I was not responsible for any of my normal commitments or responsibilities. In other words, I had a wide open week from Friday afternoon until the following Sunday afternoon- an enviable expanse of time for focused productivity.

1. Write 6 listicles and publish online. I wrote exactly one. Here it is. It may be cheating to say it counts because I wrote it a few days after the cat sitting gig.
2. **Be home for the pool repair on Sunday morning. **I did this, but was anxious to get back to the cats, and my puzzle.
3. Write 2 full length articles. I wrote one three-minute read the second Friday. I didn’t publish it until the following week.
4. Locate the play in the blue folder that I started writing last September. Reacquaint myself with it so I can finish it this summer. I located and packed the play. It is still languishing in the blue folder without seeing light of day.
5. Get my 10,000 steps a day. I did this on Monday while I was food shopping for healthy meals and snacks, including frozen beef and broccoli and a precooked bag of sticky rice. I also bought a lock for the gym locker so I could work out later in the afternoon. By end of the week I got a text from Fit Bit asking if I was dead.
6. **Go to the gym for 30-minute circuit workouts Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. **I didn’t go to the gym on Monday because I was assembling the jigsaw puzzle from the time I got home from the store. On Wednesday I couldn’t go because I was frantically finishing the puzzle. On Friday I was in a funk because of all the things I didn’t do. I did, however, return the lock.
7. **Play a daily online chess game and complete chess puzzles. **I accomplished this, but not very well. I kept losing because I was exhausted from working on the puzzle late into the nights.
8. Take a field trip to the Princeton University Art Museum. **Despite repetive promises of tomorrow, **this has not yet happened. I am reassuring myself that Princeton is going nowhere. I’ll get there eventually.
9. **Organize my new (from last summer) password book. **Like the museum, my plans to fill the nearly empty book is in stasis.
10. **Read the short-funny-easy novel for book club that I picked out. **When I got home I still had 2/3 to go. On Monday I read like my life depended on it. I finished an hour before book club.
11. Attend graduation party on Saturday. I told myself I was only going because I absolutely had to. Then again, what swimmer doesn’t have fun hanging out in the pool on a 90 degree day? I did not feel guilty for goofing off, again.
12. **Assemble the jigsaw puzzle of the English study that I will someday, to the best of my ability, recreate in my house. **Although I skipped out on my writing plans, fitness goals, chess rating, cultural aims, and my literary commitment, I am happy to report that I did what I had to do to assemble that puzzle. I stayed up late and rose early. I ordered Door Dash rather than leave this all-important station. I persevered until the end. This is my accomplishment for the week.

All-consuming masterpiece by Donna Gerard

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