I really love my lists. I’m great at making them. Masterful, even.
There’s a rule I follow religiously: if something flits across my mind and I can’t deal with it right away, I capture it on a master list or directly into my calendar. Between the two, I’ve built a steady ticker tape of what to do, where to be, and — if I’m honest — who to be.
There’s comfort in that. A sense of safety. Of control. If everything is written down and scheduled, I won’t forget. I won’t fall behind. I won’t get it wrong. And if I don’t get it wrong, maybe, just maybe, I’ll be enough.
Because beneath all that organization, there’s something else: The fear that if I’m not constantly productive, attentive, ahead, I’ll be revealed as someone who doesn’t quite deserve the life she has.
So I keep the list. Not just to manage my time, but to manage my worth. To prove I am responsible. Valuable. Lovable. To hold the fear at bay: If I stop achieving, will I still belong?
There are lists for everything — books to read, places to travel, quotes that moved me, retreats to imagine, and questions to ask. Even joy has been organized. My weekly walk with Sue and her dogs. A night at the theatre. Gardening. Journaling. Slow yoga flows.
Each beautiful thing, slotted into place. I thought it was peace.
Then the lights went out.
Literally.
A sudden storm. Tornadoes. A levelled transformer. No power. No internet. No alerts or reminders to tell me who I was supposed to be that day.
I reached for my list. And just like that, everything — everything — was off it. There was nothing I could do.
And without the list, I didn’t know how to be.
A slow panic crept in — not dramatic, just tight and invisible. I kept scanning the edges of my day for a framework, for direction. Without the structure, how would I know what was enough? What if I wasted the day, or worse, myself? Even my rest had always been accounted for. An hour block labelled Unplug + Recharge. I knew how to relax in sixty-minute increments.
But now? Time stretched and bent. It stopped being linear and became something wilder.
Uncontrolled. Abandoned.
Dangerously free.
Childlike.
Tempting.
And then, sitting in the candlelight with no signal, no structure, no plan, I met a realization I didn’t see coming.
It wasn’t just the tasks I had lost, it was my identity.
I had built so much of myself on doing things right. On managing every moment so nothing important, especially me, would fall apart.
Without the list, I felt naked.
Not because I didn’t know what to do next, but because I was suddenly face-to-face with a deeper fear: That without something to accomplish, I wasn’t sure I deserved to rest. That without constant motion, I wasn’t sure I was good. That I had been trying to earn my way into worthiness — every day, every list, every box ticked.
The list had been protecting me.
Not from forgetting — but from feeling. From want. From longing. From the question I had buried under all my structure: What if I’m not enough, just as I am?
I almost got up and invented something to do — just to outrun the feeling. But I didn’t.
I stayed. I let the silence hold me. I let the ache surface. And slowly, something else rose up to meet it.
A softness. A quiet yes. A sense that maybe I didn’t have to prove anything to belong.
That maybe there was another way to be alive.
I ate when I was hungry, not when it was time.
I walked when the light outside stirred something in me.
I cracked open a book without finishing the one before.
I wrote a poem under a tree I hadn’t noticed before.
I took a bath at dusk and fell asleep in it.
Tea with a friend ended when the pot went cold — not a moment sooner.
I got lost on a walk and let myself stay lost.
And in that lostness, I found something I hadn’t known I was missing.
Joy without permission.
Time without a finish line.
A self that existed beyond measurement.
It felt like falling in love.
Not with someone, but with the version of myself who doesn’t need to be impressive to be real.
When the power returned, I didn’t celebrate. I felt the ache of something closing.
The hum of the refrigerator, the glow of the screen — and with them, the return of expectations. The resumption of the loop.
But I am not the same. Because now I know:
The list didn’t just help me manage time. It helped me manage fear.
It shielded me from the ache of wondering whether I was lovable without earning it.
But the ache is survivable. And on the other side of it… is freedom.
So here is my confession:
I am ready to live beyond the structure. To stop performing my peace and start inhabiting it..To step outside the calendar’s artificial rhythm and move in time with something deeper, slower, stranger, and more alive.
I am daring to trust the flow.
To move toward the ache, not away from it.
To let the mess and the magic find me.
To risk being wrong — and to be loved anyway.
In spaciousness,
Tania