The trouble began with a Jolly Rancher.
Allow me to explain.
Yesterday was an epically boring day. I’ve been quite efficient at work lately, naming aerosol scents and other home fragrances with Shakespearean prolificacy, and I actually ran out of work to do. I found myself staring at my purple accent wall for minutes on end, wondering how many candles I’d have to sniff to knock myself out.
But no! I suddenly thought, wrestling my face from the puddle of drool on my desk. I will not let the specter of lassitude defeat me!
I stood up and felt the blood rush to my limbs. I stretched to my full height (8’11”) and shook out my arms. Then it hit me: use the to-do list.
* * *
Boredom is a real crisis for me. See, I’m the type of person who prefers to live on overdrive (not 2Fast2Furious overdrive, but stretched just thin enough to worry my loved ones). On any given day, I bustle around and lord my productiveness over everybody. I’ve even been known to quip that “If you’re bored, you’re boring.”
Charmed, I’m sure.
To cultivate my enormously impressive sense of productivity, I’ve developed the to-do list. This lengthy collection of personal goals ranges from lofty (Write Great American Novel) to simple (Check Voicemail) to easily forgotten (Wash Hair). It’s the kind of list that causes me to simultaneously applaud my own foresight and twitch at the thought of how much I have left to do. It’s the crack-cocaine of agendas.
* * *
Filled with renewed purpose, I rose from my desk and strode ambitiously out of my office, eyes and mind firmly trained on one goal: the espresso machine.
Coffee is the first step toward achieving goals, as any procrastinator can tell you. Without coffee, a person would deprive herself of the energy needed to achieve maximum efficiency and chemically induced heart palpitations.
I popped in a jewel-toned N’Espresso pod and listen to the brew burning as it hits the cup. I feel so space-age in this modern conference room, a butterfly of a businessperson taking sugary sips of colorful furniture and natural light.
I would kill for a window in my office.
No distractions, I thought again, and carried my hot thimbleful of jet fuel to my desk. Pushing my whimsical cats-doing-yoga mouse pad aside (because what self-respecting spinster-in-training doesn’t decorate her office with cats?), I unfolded a crumpled piece of scrap and picked up a pen.
There it was.
A scrawled, uneven list, bracketed by key dates and parentheses. I tapped each item with the point of my pen, marveling at the number of things I’d done that week, the number still undone. In the past few years, I’ve developed the practice of organizing tasks by both importance and urgency; in the fast-paced world of home fragrance, such organization is critical to survival, like oxygen or Krispie Kreme. How else would I be able to prioritize between the input of candle wax data (urgent but not important) and the development of new concepts in cat litter (important but not urgent)? I ASK YOU.
By most accounts, I’m a go-with-the-flow sort of person, a creator of concepts and not conclusions. I leave the house with wet hair; I grimace when using words like ‘deliverable’ and ‘objective’. Without corporate pressure to whittle me, I’d never become the sort of girl who crouches in a dark office and drums her desk, impatiently sorting virtual folders of virtual files because an algorithm-fueled database loads reams of binary too slowly.
But Elizabeth 2.0 plays at having a career, so I sipped my coffee with a face scrunched in consternation. Should I attack my long-dreaded performance review paperwork? Or organize a meeting to brainstorm next-gen apple-cinnamon scents?
This was tough.
I scratched my chin. I smoothed my papers. My foot twitched, and I knew the caffeine was getting to me. Time to take a walk.
Out the door and around the corner into the sweetly fragranced hallway. My feet knew where they were headed before I did.
The candy cube.
Every office has one, I’m convinced. It might not be a cucbicle, per se; it might be a shelf in the kitchen or a jar on the secretary’s desk. Regardless of where you find it, the candy cube serves the same purpose: to make you and every weak-willed coworker fat. Brilliant. Every time I pay a visit, I thank the processed sugar gods and remind myself that death by late-onset diabetes is as much a choice as working here.
I choose this! I thought, scooping M&M’s by the handful, a stack of individually-wrapped Twizzlers and a couple Jolly Ranchers to boot. Just because I have them doesn’t mean I’ll eat them now, I justified, but it’ll save me a trip later.
You know, so I could focus on my work.
I got back to my desk without meeting any coworkers in the hallway. I was grateful for this, as I’d resorted to using a paper mug to carry the great quantity of candy I’d stolen. Plonking into my chair, I unwrapped a green apple Jolly Rancher and popped the sour sugar crystal into my mouth.
Whoops.
* * *
Here’s the thing: when I’m bored, I sometimes eat a wee bit too much.
The same way the Titanic hit a wee bit of ice.
I have found that chewing is a very effective way to trick my mind into thinking I’m doing something productive. On nights when I’m feeling ambitious, I’ll dedicate nearly half an hour to creative writing before I realize that not only have I consumed an entire jar of salsa, but my single contribution to the literary landscape is an adjective-laden comparison between the US Senate and Britney Spears. If I’m feeling REALLY low, I’ll just masticate while banging my head against the keyboard.
That’s right, kids! Don’t ever let them tell you that you can’t be a writer! Just hoover sleeves of Oreos while pacing the house, stock up on LOLCATZ permalinks and get your hands away from that woman’s face. Seriously, she’s already eaten eight servings of nuts and she’s only on the prologue.
* * *
I pushed back my shoulders and opened PowerPoint, chewing on a Twizzler as I did so. I titled a slide ‘History’ and quickly barfed every fact I knew about apple cinnamon fragrance, opting to tackle the big project head-on. Thirty seconds later, I’d regurgitated all that I knew, so I swallowed some M&Ms and returned to the list.
My eyes flicked across rumpled chicken scratch. Chewing absently, I touched my face, saw in the haphazard graph of my personal and professional workload the vague shadow of a girl. In long-term dreams and short-term minutiae I had defined, despite my best efforts, the sort of person I planned to become. I would write a bestseller about the reformation of love in entropic society; I’d remember to floss my teeth. I’d meted out hours and days of my life, considered the epic as well as the fleeting. My life would be pointless or pointed but always predictable.
I chewed.
But this can’t be right, I thought to myself. I ate more M&Ms as fear lodged in my gut. If this was it, if this was the plan—if these tasks were the best possible sum of my days—then where were the sunsets and walks in the woods? My impromptu rants and impassioned speeches? What about late afternoon tides and spontaneous road trips, snorts of laughter and choking love?
Dear God, where was the chocolate?
I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly.
The list is just a starting point, I told myself. A jump-off. A platform for evaluation, for delivering objectives against tight timelines.
I unclenched a fistful of colorful candy, felt the sweetness pound in my veins. Certain priorities don’t make agendas. I didn’t plan to eat all this sugar; it didn’t promote efficiency. The only margin it increased was my waistline.
But you know what?
What, self? What, as you sneakily unwrap another Jolly Rancher?
Life is not a performance review.
I smiled, then laughed. I folded my to-do list and set it aside. Standing again, I went into the boardroom, stood by the window near the coffee machine. Sunlight moved across the lawn, great golden sheets pouring past clouds. Beauty scattered from the sky as the sugar swirled through my heart.
* * *
So I let myself off the hook yesterday. I didn’t get anything done.
And that’s the trouble with a Jolly Rancher. It’s the rush that follows, the waterfall, all juice and addiction and Technicolor joy. It might make you forget that you’ve got your priorities, that you’ve got a to-do list at all. You might start to believe that you’ve done enough, that one day’s work is another day’s leisure. You might dream beyond those indelible goals, the careful achievements and sanctioned objectives, and remember a girl who can’t be contained in a list.
If you’re not careful, you just might find this exact moment is full of sweetness, that when the to-do list rushes away you’re still having the time of your life.
