The average person carries around some kind of checklist to help them remember things, organize events, and balance out tasks. Whether that’s writing down your shopping list, listing out class assignments, or putting a sticker on the date of a friend’s birthday party, checklists are useful tools that help us keep up with reality. But if the self-acclaimed Pinterest influencers have taught us anything, it is that anything can become an aesthetic, even a checklist.
We’ve become obsessed with the people who doodle perfect flowers and leaves across their checklists’ title, who have a perfectly shaped boxes and banners for every occasion and can write calligraphy like it’s nothing. With them, everything looks perfect, flawless, under control.
I’ve also noticed that anything can become a checklist; from our daily activities, to chores, to eating/sleeping/working schedules, to what movies we watch and how much we spend – it all becomes another thing we have to do because the almighty pen wrote it out in neat cursive.
Despite what you may think I’m not degrading people using checklists. I use them myself. It really does help when I have something to look at that reminds me I need to do such and such an activity done before such and such a time. What I don’t like is how often we become enslaved to these pieces of paper.
I realized this recently on my way back to campus from Thanksgiving break. I had just gone on a big shopping spree and purchased 15 new books, many of which I was excited to read. Then the thought suddenly entered my head about making a checklist for each of them so that I would be sure to finish one book first before I moved on to the other.
I would finish “The Odyssey” first, of course, since I was currently about halfway through it, then maybe I would start “Caraval,” or “Frankenstein,” or “The Jungle Book” which I had been so excited to find, but I couldn’t be reading all of them at the same time . . . wait, why couldn’t I?
The thought jolted me that there was no rule saying I had to finish one book before completely starting another. Yes it may be unconventional, but if I got bored with one book, who’s to say I wasn’t allowed to start a different one? No one. The only one saying so was my own mind.
I, like many girls, have gotten swept up into trying to be that aesthetic girlie we all like to see on Instagram, the one who likes to wake up early, reads a lot of books, keeps everything neat, and yes, uses a pretty checklist for everything.
Ever since I started high school, I remember making a promise to myself every year about something I wanted to do differently: taking nicer notes, journaling more, dressing nicer, etc. I was one of those people who was convinced buying myself a bullet journal would make my life complete. I bought it about two years ago and I’ve barely touched it.
Life’s more busy and complicated than what we see on Pinterest and Instagram. I’m sure we all know that, yet it’s something we need to be constantly reminded of. Why do we endlessly compare our lives to the pleasing ones we see on the screen? Like I said before, it’s because, with them, their lives look under control. The content makes us believe that as long as we have the right clothes, the proper habits, and a perfect organizer, our lives will work out. And in trying to make our lives as perfect as possible, we lose the freedom and flexibility that is required to navigate life.
I’m not saying to approach life with absolutely no thought or plans. I personally need a plan to operate on a daily basis! but you don’t have to sell your soul and life to what it says on paper or on a screen, even if it just begins with not worrying about how pretty and accurate your checklist is.