TO DO LISTS

It’s the season of my discontent, time to re-evaluate this whole life business. My body, once a dependable accomplice, now creaks like an old office chair, my knees chiming in at every opportunity. Nights bring no relief, just a marathon of ceiling-staring, hot flashes, and the nagging fear that I forgot to do something on my nightmare TO DO list.

I’m now more ready for a NOT DOING list.

And through it all, the world keeps turning. It spews trends from Instagram posts and wellness blogs, wagging a finger that I should hydrate, breathe deeply, and keep a gratitude journal. I’ve tried all of these, but by day three, I was ready to put my middle finger up at all “the experts” under 40! Self-care looks suspiciously like another thing to try and fail at, sold in the form of overpriced sexy gym wear and artisanal green drinks.

Because when the scented candles burn out, the tasks remain.

Meanwhile, the real tyranny is the to-do list: a hydra-headed monster that spawns two new tasks for every one I manage to slay. The 38-slide deck at 11 p.m. bleeds into forgotten permission slips, missed yoga classes,  and the eternal search for missing essentials. Hobbies? Leisure? Those are fairy tales told to people who don’t work at home prepping, designing showcase slide shows, and following group chats.

They say retirement will be rest, but I know better: it’ll just be a new calendar of doctor’s appointments, endless pills sorted into color-coded boxes, and still answering the age-old question of what’s for dinner. There’s no cinematic glory here, no swelling music, no romance in the rain, just the quiet, relentless grind of cycles and a body that betrays me at every turn.

The Unsung Heroism of the Mundane

But here’s the thing: this isn't the romanticized struggle of a brooding artist, but the relentless, exhausting grind of the everyday. It’s the silent foray into customer service centres and early morning prep before the boys emerge from bedrooms like cavemen. This feeling of being stretched thin, of having a body that's a mutinous co-conspirator, and a mind that won’t shut off, is a shared, yet rarely spoken, truth for so many.

Showing up every day, holding it all together with caffeine and sheer spite, is its own kind of heroism. It’s the refusal to give up, even when every part of you feels like it’s in survival mode. It’s the ability to find humor in the absurdity, to face the daily grind with dry wit and a healthy dose of cynicism. This is a monument not to effortless grace, but to grit.

If survival, wit, and grit don’t earn me a title, then success is clearly being measured by the wrong metrics. I'll see is Chatgpt agrees with me!