To-do lists

What is your motivation?

True confessions: I have spent my life motivated by guilt, shame, fear, and anxiety. I am hear to testify that many unpleasant tasks can be crossed off a to-do list using these motivators.

What I cannot truthfully say, is that I have accomplished anything of lasting value this way. I have made and completed thousands of to-do lists and yet I have arrived at 42 with none of the credentials my college self envisioned. So I have to ask:

WHAT HAVE I DONE WITH THE LAST 20 YEARS?

To be fair to myself, I am not homeless, dead, loveless or addicted to prescription drugs. I am not without a certain wisdom that comes from having paid my own way for 23 years. I have read much, watched a fair number of good and bad movies (2 of which I can quote verbatim) and can hold my own at Trivial Pursuit.

Still, I wish at 23 I had put the following items on my to-do list:

Get doctorate
Be a commentator for NPR
Write and publish a novel
Publish articles for The New Republic and the New Yorker
Live on the East Coast for 1 year
Travel Europe
Put money away every month
Have a child
Stay single until I find eligible father for said child
Live in Mexico for at least a month

How do we handle regrets? I have spent two years using regrets as a weapon against myself. What a loser I am. What's wrong with me?

Enough!

Still, everything must serve some purpose. What purpose can regrets have?

Here's what I think: regrets tell us where to start in reshaping our life. They are a clue to re-igniting the passions we have forgotten.

The hardest truth of middle life is that we cannot get time back. All those hours and tears I devoted to anxiety, alcohol, bad men and bad jobs are gone forever. I cannot change a thing.

I can, however, stop wasting any further time.

Ok, 42-year old self, listen up. Here is my to-do list for the next 20 years:

Get more education
Get my voice on NPR
Publish as many articles as I can for anyone who will have me
Travel the East Coast with my beloved husband
Travel Europe
Put money away every month
Lavish much love on any children that come my way
Learn how to banish anxiety, shame, depression, guilt and fear from my life
Cherish my friends
Laugh a lot
Find a way to make money at what I love

Got it?