Sanity is… Writing Lists and Baking

Hello my name is Lizzy and I’m addicted to writing lists and baking.

Around my house you will easily find up to five or six lists on any given day. Shopping Lists, to-do lists, goals lists, assignment lists… Basically if it can be listed, it *will* be listed, and if I haven’t written it out in a list, it probably won’t get done.

When a list is almost completely checked off, I’ll give up on it. It’s too messy now, too full of scribbles. I’ll take the one or two things I have left and start a new list with them - moving in a perpetual cycle of things to complete, of lists.

Sometimes I have to resist the urge to put “write a list” as the first item, because someone might see it and judge me. But apparently, admitting this in a blog is just fine, so there you go. Possibly more shamefully, sometimes I actually do write things in after the fact and then tick them off, just to prove to myself that I’ve accomplished them. It’s like they didn’t happen unless I write them down. Mental, I know.  

Today’s list* looks like this:

-       pencil case update

-       ironing

-       print forms

-       pack folder and notebooks

-       put oil and water in car

-       wash clothes

-       make lunches:

o   bread

o   zucchini slice

o   banana bread

I’m going on prac tomorrow, so today is the day I organise all the little fiddly jobs to make sure I don’t rock up in front of a class and realise that I’ve forgotten how to teach. No, I don’t have to write “remember how to teach” on a list; what I mean is that once all the tiny things are sorted, I feel infinitely more confident, more ready to try new things and be challenged. But if I’ve got the wrong pencils in my pencil case well then… god help us all, I’ll be balled up under my desk by 10am.

Also, that last item in the list is important. When I have a lot to do, I often take the time to make food. This seems bizarre, I know. I’m so busy I hardly have time for sleep and yet I spent two hours today doing nothing but baking. Is there logic to this? Possibly not. But there is something very comforting about baking, to me, anyway. I usually make at least a batch of muffins each weekend. This could just be because I really like muffins though, not sure.

But it goes back to the original point, I’ve organised my lunches now. I’ve got fancy bread and a zucchini slice and banana bread. I’m actually ensuring that in the middle of a stressful week, I’ll have at least one serve of veges in my lunch, I’ve got something sweet to push through that last little bit of the day, I won’t be hungry. But more importantly, I don’t ever feel stressed out when I’m baking. My mind goes blank, really, and I don’t think about any of the things I’m worried about. I just think about flours and cinnamon and whether I should use up the bananas in banana bread or if I should make them into muffins and how many chocolate chips are too many chocolate chips. Is that even an amount?

So yes, I’m addicted to lists and baking, but they keep me sane. And frankly, that’s very important right now.

It's possible that I only wrote this blog to show off what I made today... 

*One of. There’s a whole other list for assessment. Shhhh I’m perfectly sane.