On Getting Started

Lists...

Why a blog of lists?

Well, why not?

I'm taking a page from my son, Bradley. He makes lists. Lot's of lists. Lists for everything he thinks of. He has lists of comic characters. He has lists of Superheroes, and their specific powers. He has lists of Pokemon characters and their characteristics. He has lists of things that he likes. He collects movies, so he has lists. He has a list of VCR tapes he has. He has another list of VCR tapes he has that he wants to replace with DVDs. He has a list of DVDs he has. He has another list of DVDs he wants to get. He has a small budget set aside to add to his colelction of DVDs, so each month, he pulls out his list of DVDs and picks items from the list. If he sees a movie he wants, he doesn't rush out to but it, he adds it to his list. I didn't mention that my son has Autism. It does not affect his as severely as some, but it does affect him more severely than others. But he has mastered something that I struggle with. He sets goals and keeps working towards them. He's not in a huge hurry - it's just the way he lives. I envy that about him.

There's also the phrase that goals not written down are just wishes. I tried to research who originated that statement, but as happens in our new internet meme-world, phrases are transmitted faster than people can say them and all attribution gets long lost. I often wonder if modern philosophy and poetry may lose their connection with the authors with the rapidity of the web…But that’s a topic for another time and another blog. Making physical lists is a way of identifying wishes and identifying them as something more. When we write something down, we’re identifying it as more important than just whimsy (although I’d suggest whimsy is pretty darn important). When we write it down, we put a stake in the ground (another one of those phrases). We take the first step toward accomplishing it. Having said that, it’s not necessarily that I want to do everything I put on a list…But it identifies something that was a little more important to me at some time, and if and when a target of opportunity arises, well, there’s a list to take advantage of it. For example, maybe for some reason I receive an all-expense paid trip to anywhere, where shall I go? Now on the spot, trying to think of someplace, one could easily waste the opportunity picking some common destination that comes to the top of the head and it’s nothing special. Now coming to the top of your head is something special in itself, but again I digress. We can leave it to another time and blog. So, when such opportunity arises, if I have a list, I already have some places selected that carry some importance.

Another benefit to a list, is that it tells you something about the person who made it. When someone lists 10 things they think are important, or 5 best places in the world and why, you really get to know them a bit better. So it’s kind of a roundabout way to make myself available. Now, I don’t necessarily have a huge desire for people to know more about me – particularly on this interweb, but with the availability of information as it is today, people will learn about you anyway, and this way I can have some input to the story. Again, not that I have any fantasies that anyone really want to know me in particular. In the end, it may be better than one of the tablets where I good heartedly start to write a list of things, put the tablet somewhere, and then move it during cleaning, then put it in a box with other things that need to be put away, and then put in the garage because there’s things in the box (I don’t know what) that I might need again later. So in the end, this is my list of lists. A place where I can put things I think of and can find it later without taking up space on a tablet in a box in my garage.

So, that's why, sort of...

Oh, and I'll leave comments open, so if anyone actually reads any of my lists and wants to add something I may not have thought of, or would like to tell me how wrong I am that "To Sir With Love" is one of my all time great movies, I'm good with that.