It’s been a while! My subject today is lists.
I like lists, especially when planning or trying to work through problems. Since I’ve been working in different areas recently, my cumulative lists are getting interesting. If I were an installation artist with a taproot into funding, I could probably make a huge interactive exhibit of list modules in some expensive pseudo-industrial downtown space where people could get clobbered by lists of gigantic proportions,
but I’m not, so here I am blogging about them.
Here’s an example, in list form, of things I’ve been thinking about or actively working on:
Community food issues
Elitism and exclusivity in social and environmental organizations
Communications, good, bad, blocked, inspiring, strange…
Clutter
Time-facets and dimensions of
Excuses, here there everywhere
Gangs
Money seemingly neither here nor there but everywhere else
Poverty too much
Education too much of some, not enough of the other
Ignorance too much
Public transportation catching on fire??
Family
More Clutter
Recycling
Growing things
Living with coyotes and other large creatures harmoniously
Local air and water pollution, accompanying denial and blustering
Well, that’s a start anyway.
At a conference I recently attended, I realized the common next step after creating working lists-meaning things that require effective action to be taken-is procrastination and excuses, which I am now naming
“But Amendments”.
For every problem, it seems like there are instantly 10+ But Amendments globbed on, a serious problem that diverts energy better spent on actually dealing with the original list item.
Is this where the phrase “No but’s about it!” comes from? A brief search for the phrase history didn’t turn up any clues; I’ll have to check into this further, adding yet another item to my list.
