Miscalculations

It is my hobby to list lots of tasks to do whenever I get to have school breaks. So when I was packing my bags again for another taste of my lola's pochero (and the smell of the television rotting from Disney and Nick marathons of Avatar, The Fairly Odd Parents, Cory in the House, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody--oddly, I still don't watch Hannah Montana), instead of listing down the clothes that I will be bringing, I took my Sharpie and tried to make a long list of things to do over the break. But when I was rummaging for my Sharpie in my knapsack, I saw that neatly folded white paper with Sharpie writings that I had done before the sem break. So I just added a few more to-reads and to-learns.

I arrived the 21st of December, unexcited and indifferent. Everything went well with what I had in mind until after I have slept and I lazed off the entire morning doing nothing but snoring. I only had 13 days to do all the tasks that I have listed. Two columns of square brackets filled the entire page until no more additional tasks could be filled in.

Only 2 days were given to me to do my first task of getting a license. The Land Transportation Office only gave out licenses from 8/9/? - 4/5 PM so I had to queue up in that 2 days given me because the office wouldn't be reopening till January, when I wouldn't be there anymore.

The first task: FAILED. I scrapped the entire two mornings sleeping. I must have been exhausted since the start of the sem since Mushi spanking or poking me in my sleep wasn't able to wake me up. The first day, I procrastinated. The second day, I was too caught up in Alan Weisman's The World Without Us (or was it Carolyn Abraham's Possessing Genius?--not sure which) that I totally forgot that I had planned to get a license.

The good thing about listing tasks is tracking your progress. Inking an "X" between those square brackets was very fulfilling. So I brought with me an entire library: Alan Weisman, Carolyn Abraham, Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, Plato's The Republic, Boyer's Biochemistry, Madigan and Martinko's Brock Biology of Microorganisms, and Bauman's Understanding Microbiology. The last two books are both thicker than a ream of bond paper, and a dozen times heavier.

So I did well with the to-reads; I finished Weisman, Abraham and Gladwell. But I never read an entire paragraph from either Microbiology textbook. And I never even unpacked my Boyer. Phew, what a waste of Newtons or ham and cheese croissants or chocolate madeleine's, whichever supplied the ATP's needed for that!

One other task was to finish a jigsaw puzzle. I slept 3 AM for that "Scream" cross Sesame Street jigsaw puzzle only to wake up to a disassembled Ernie and Bert--and the rest of the puzzle pieces too.

I never really got the hang of it. The hang of listing things and religiously ticking off the done one's. Perhaps just the doing part. A decade and a half of listing things, scribbling down in Sharpies--or Pilots when I was younger--things to do, planning things in organizers, whatever. I just never really finished an entire list of to-do's, and it's breaking my heart. *heartbroken*

Hope sparks in 2009 as I will not be miscalculating anymore, and will be finishing them all.
*background sound to Mortal Kombat's echoing narration during fatality, brutality, or babality tweaks*