Structuring life around cleaning up

I’m finding that I’m organizing life around cleaning up. Get things into a queue, then get them out of that queue. Another way to talk about this is “checking things off lists.”

It has great benefits for organization. I find I almost never lose or forget about things. They’re always on the right list, here or there.

On the other hand, it makes me feel a little like a robot, like my entire life is all about finishing the list. What happens when the list is done?

Right now I’m trying to take off a couple of those lists by removing stuff from my phone. Disconnecting a little, etc. We’ll see how it goes.

Other thoughts that were on my list to blog about:
- I’m getting annoyed by “X shouldn’t be a partisan issue.” Like, yes, I agree. Health care should be a human right, net neutrality should be a thing, etc. But I don’t think you’re going to convince any Republicans that they should all of a sudden support the ACA because it “shouldn’t be partisan.”
- Listening to Mogul, a podcast about hip-hop executive Chris Lighty, and they talk about a time when, as a poor kid in the Bronx, he saved up for a nice jacket, then some other jerk stole his jacket. It’s not fair, and it’s kinda this first “loss of innocence” moment for him. He did everything he was supposed to do, and wrong place wrong time, he gets screwed. This feeling really hits. I get that feeling (“someone stole my bike wheels!") and it sends me absolutely nuts, because not only is it not fair to me, it just doesn’t even make sense! Like, it’s worse than just “I wanted X, someone else wanted Y, so they took it” - it’s more like “sorry, the universe rolled dice and you lose.” Just, random bad things happen! But at the same time, I never get that feeling on the scale that he does. Never had my life’s savings stolen from me. And it made me think, because he’s a black kid in the Bronx I guess, imagine black people getting killed by police; cop freaks out and kills Philando Castile, and a lot of people say “welp, deal with it, being a cop is hard and sometimes you roll dice and get unlucky.” I don’t know what to do about that. For starters, maybe, we acknowledge that the US isn’t as much of a land of opportunity for some as it is for others, and we oughta do whatever we can to fix that.
- Sorry, ’s not very profound, but it’s been on my mind. See my previous assertions that “this is my journal for myself, which you can read if you like.”


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