I didn't finish my to-do list. Instead, self-resourced. Here's what happened.
The to-do list is never done. That doesn't mean you did nothing.
The to-do list is never done.
I don’t mean that in a philosophical, such is the nature of modern life way. I mean it never closes. There is no bottom. I have brush my hair on there. Take vitamins. Get kids to school. Things that are either always done or never done depending on the day and my capacity and whether anyone lost a shoe.
And still — incomplete. Still carrying the weight of everything I didn’t get to. The tightness in my throat that arrives around 4pm when I look at what I said I’d do and compare it to what actually happened. The quiet indictment of it. The oh fuck, I did nothing today that is never true and always feels true.
The failing. As a woman, a mom, a paid working professional, an unpaid mom person, a partner, an individual. And was I attempting to run a business at some point? Ha. Hah. HAH.
All of it, living in a little digital list.
And then, one day, something shifted.
I looked at the list and thought: wait. I own this. I own my time. I decide what gets done and what doesn’t. So I started acting like it.
I moved things. Reorganized. Got clear on what was actually urgent, what would feel genuinely good to accomplish, and what was neither vital nor nourishing. That last category — I nixed it. Moved it away. Let it go.
And when the list was tidy, manageable, honest — I stopped. I rested. I nourished myself until tomorrow.
I didn’t finish my to-do list that day. I moved things forward, and I self-resourced. And that felt, against all cultural conditioning, like enough.
Because it was.