{"id":34811,"date":"2026-01-24T10:49:32","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T16:49:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=34811"},"modified":"2026-01-24T10:49:32","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T16:49:32","slug":"dont-go-adding-to-my-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/24\/dont-go-adding-to-my-list\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Go Adding To My List"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/todolisthope.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"Book cover\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\">The last couple of weeks, I have been diligent in creating a to-do list to guide my days since my contracts have gotten a little thin or gone into remission, and if left to my own devices, I&#8217;ll doomscroll and refresh job boards (professional doomscrolling) and end up with nothing done.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;ve started making lists of discrete tasks to accomplish throughout the day.  Sometimes, they&#8217;re chores.  Sometimes, they&#8217;re repeated tasks. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been using the free giveaway notepads that various charities send me as part of fundraising pitches.  For the most part, the charities get nothing because 1) If they&#8217;re big enough to buy my name on a list and send me monthly come-ons with little printed gifts, they&#8217;re too big and 2) Runnin&#8217; on a lean mixture, man.  <\/p>\n<p>So I end up with a list, and I cross out some things (but too often carry them over to the next list).  Currently, in heavy rotation, I have St. Jude&#8217;s Research Hospital, who has me on their Whale list either because 1) I ran a (less than) 5K supporting them in, what, 2021? It was the weekend I then drove over to Poplar Bluff to help my brother remove the shingles from his roof&#8211;pretty sure it was after his first wife died or 2) because my sainted mother supported them (she met Danny Thomas once and interviewed him, perhaps at a fundraiser for St. Jude&#8217;s).  Or 3) Because my name is out there as a Whale from the <em>before<\/em> times.<\/p>\n<p>So, the current notepad has something extra in the footer.  The word <em>hope<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, thanks, no, that is not on my to-do list, thanks.  Please do not add things, generic tablet designer.<\/p>\n<p>Also, note: Since beginning this a couple weeks ago, I have actually <em>used up<\/em> one of these notepads.  Which is amazing, honestly, as in the past, I&#8217;ve jotted later-inscrutable words and phrases on them before they get pushed under a printer or pile and get exhumed later with little comprehensibility, only to have the top sheet removed and the pad put back in the set of recent unused arrivals.<\/p>\n<p>My goodness, if I keep this up and can use up one every week before a new one arrives, perhaps I can start making way on the backlog or even the drawerful that contain my sainted mother&#8217;s name on them (and maybe some with my long-departed aunt&#8217;s) which I inherited almost seventeen years ago and could not discard then and cannot discard yet (because if I open that filing drawer, I might not be able to close it again.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and if you&#8217;re keeping track, the number of to-do lists I&#8217;ve actually completed?  One or two.  Maybe more, but I would not take the over on that bet.  <em>Potatoes<\/em>, that is, roasting a double batch of oven-roasted potatoes, has been on the list for most of January, the Whole 30 era.  Fortunately, the more perishable <em>eggs<\/em> has been on the list a couple of times and has been removed as I&#8217;ve actually cooked them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The last couple of weeks, I have been diligent in creating a to-do list to guide my days since my contracts have gotten a little thin or gone into remission, and if left to my own devices, I&#8217;ll doomscroll and refresh job boards (professional doomscrolling) and end up with nothing done. So I&#8217;ve started making [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34811"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34813,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34811\/revisions\/34813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}