A Spoonie's Won't Do List

To Do Today Tomorrow Next Week At Some Point

• Wake up with alarm

• Wake up five minutes after alarm goes off

• Wake up twenty minutes after alarm goes off

• Wake up

• Move body off the bed (with or without blanket) at some point before the evening hours and take at least five steps from the bedroom to demonstrate active pulse and continued breathing so partner/roommate/parent doesn’t contact emergency personnel out of fear that you died in the night

• Shower, shave (legs, face, whatever), and wash hair

• Shower and wash hair

• Shower

• Splash water on face (soap optional) to establish an attempt was made at a hygiene routine (extra points awarded if a washcloth is employed); utilize headband to disguise lack of credible hairstyle

• Make a healthy, nutritious breakfast

• Make breakfast

• Grab something roughly approximating calories and consume

• Stand in front of the open refrigerator (or cupboard or pantry) and stare at the available foodstuffs for a minimum of ten minutes, contemplating 1) the potential GI reactions to each, 2) the amount of energy required to transform ingredients into a recognizable food item, and 3) your current motivation to consume any form of nourishment; walk away with either nothing or three slices of cheese

• Get dressed in “normal” clothing

• Get dressed in comfortable clothing

• Get dressed in sweats

• Get dressed in clean pajamas

• Decide that no one will be coming over (exempting the mail and delivery drivers, none of who will enter the house), so there’s no one to judge if you rock the same pajamas from the night before—which, really, aren’t dirty since all you did was toss and turn on the bed in a parody of sleep

• Start work promptly at 9:00 AM

• Start work at 9:30 AM

• Start work at 10:00 AM

• Look up from doom-scrolling and feel a pressing guilt to become a productive member of society—or at least the household—that gets you moving from the couch to your desk

• Take a mid-morning stretch break

• Take a stretch break at noon

• Decide that your legs moved as you walked from the office to the kitchen to grab a granola bar (in lieu of a proper, healthy lunch) out of the cupboard in the middle of the afternoon, which technically counts as muscles stretching

• Write out a grocery list

• Write out the most important items as a semblance of a grocery list

• Write a grocery list and leave it on the counter

• Decide, as a mostly-functional adult, you are capable of making a trip to the supermarket without the assistance of a piece of paper, conveying trust to a brain that has—thus far—failed to allow you to accomplish even menial tasks throughout the day

• Conclude that your body can reasonably survive on bread, bananas, zucchini, and one box of macaroni and cheese for the week (or until you have enough momentum to drag your butt back to the store—with a list) despite the fact you are no longer thirteen

• Go to the gym

• Complete a workout at home

• Take a walk around the neighborhood

• Get out of your desk chair, feel lead weights attach themselves to your limbs because you failed to move throughout the day (or eat properly), and decide that the sudden spike in your heart rate from the pain equates to an aerobic exercise

• Clean entire house

• Clean half of house

• Clean one room

• Clean counter

• Spend an hour debating the merit of cleaning—complete with calculating the resulting exhaustion and pain—when everything gets cluttered within moments of finishing anyway; watch a cat knock a book off the coffee table, confirming the futility of your actions; settle for straightening pillows and blankets

• Meet friends for dinner and a movie

• Meet friends for dinner

• Meet friends for a drink

• Cobble together a last-minute lie regarding a bogus deadline to explain why (for the forty-seventh time) you need to reschedule as you collapse on the couch with your true best friend, the heating pad

• Go to bed at a reasonable hour

• Go to bed before midnight

• Go to bed so you’ll get six hours of sleep

• Go to bed so you’ll get four hours of sleep

• Congratulate yourself on curling up in your bed at a reasonable time, completing the first portion of the sleep equation; choose to ignore the fact you spend the majority of the night staring at the backs of your eyes and chanting, “Go to sleep”