A list to End all Lists
A LIST TO END ALL LISTS
Paul McDermott
It's a common disease, more fatal than malaria or even cancer, and it affects billions, literally. This illness, although drastically and globally spread across this sphere of human inhabitance, has found no treatment. It will destroy thousands and impair millions. It will break marriages, cause bankruptcy, and more than often threaten jobs. Once infected, there is no hope. This disease? Procrastination.
Yes, it is an illness, yet those higher beings we call medical analysts and scientific professors neglect to associate with this fatal condition. And it is a fatal condition, believe me.
Often those impaired with this illness are oblivious to the hold it takes on them. Early in the contraction, signs can be noted. However these signs are often hard to establish.
Such cases of the disease have been recorded in common, everyday people. One particular characteristic is known to be a fetish for writing lists. As odd as it sounds, the unfortunate recipients of this fatality are known to write extensive lists, heading a novel of 'things to do'.
It seems questionable that people suffering from a tendency to 'put things off' may in fact document their means of doing so. It would be expected that if they did in fact write lists, they were doing so to organize themselves. Do not be fooled! This is just a cosmetic cover-up of blemishes that are blistering just a little too much.
More often than not, the casualties of this impediment are led to believe that writing lists to remind themselves, and setting deadlines for doing so, will somehow solve the problem at hand. Like squeezing a juicy pimple, it just enhances the pain.
Lists are made, then another sheet of lists follow, then lists for lists for the lists made are made for the lists that are lists for lists that were lists for the lists before. A labyrinth of, dare I say the word again, lists, litter the refrigerator, office and believe it or not, the sock draw.
That letter your boss wanted you to write four weeks ago is due tomorrow. The broken light bulb outside hasn't been changed since your mother-in-law died, and it's been three months since the old hag passed on. That RSVP to the engagement party was due two days ago, the scent from the soiled underpants under the bed is wafting through the rest of the house, the rail on the staircase is dangerously swaying in the wind from the draft because you didn't buy that pathetic foam snake your wife asked you to pick up at the supermarket, you were meant to tell your wife you're leaving her before your 20 year old girl friend does and now, because of your own bloody stupidity, she's in a halter neck and a mini skirt cooing at the front door....
Do not laugh. Do not even consider it. As humorous as these antics sound, they are the beginning of a long and empowering illness that is more common than we would like to admit.
As mentioned, there is no cure, as of yet anyway. I cannot offer any thoughtful solutions. However, in the nineties, when awareness is crucial, I write this to make you aware. Do not travel down the same path as I or many other followers. Being now educated of the disease, work towards helping us, the suffers trapped under its powerful spell, fight it. But then again, the chances are you have already been infected since you are reading this lengthy passage, when you should really be mowing that lawn.....
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