7.00: Wake up

I wrote my first real to-do list on January 1st. It's on an A5 size sheet of old notepad paper, the kind with tiny squares that make your eyes hurt instead of lines, and the edge of it is ragged where it ripped as I tore the page out of the book. The writing on it shrinks down the further down the page you get because I started to run out of room, and there are at least three swear words on the page. I'm weirdly proud of it.

It's funny to think that it took 21 years for me to decide to try writing out my plans for each day, but I never really needed it before now. I've always been a reasonably organised person and I rarely need written reminders to do things, but lock down has had an impact on all of us and I am no exception.

It's remarkably vague for a to-do list; there are no truly specific instructions, but rather, a loose guide for what I should do with myself on any given day. I deliberately made it flexible in case of anything unexpected popping up, as unlikely as that is at the moment. Maybe it's a bit juvenile, having a to-do list that only tells you basic things such as 'wake up' and 'lunchtime', but in the absence of pretty much any sort of structure in my day-to-day life, I really needed it.

Strictly speaking, the routine laid out on the list isn't all that different from what I was doing before. It encourages me to get things done earlier than I used to, because when I don't have deadlines I have a bad habit of procrastinating, but the basic things that it encourages me to get done are the same as before. Really, it's more of a self-imposed timetable than anything else, but it works.

Like the rest of England at the moment, I am back in quarantine. I am still working from home, still taking advantage of the fact that my dog needs to go for walks to get out of the house for my allowed exercise every day, still waking up and going to bed at roughly the same time, though mornings aren't my favourite thing in the world, especially at this time of year.

Living in a rural area means that we are among the safer people when it comes to chances of contracting covid, but it also means that the isolation tends to be felt more keenly. Even before the new lock down was put in place, I hadn't seen my friends face to face in months. I was beginning to fall apart, in a bad way. I stopped reading, stopped writing. Going out on walks felt like a chore in a way that it never had. My appetite vanished along with my ability to fall asleep at a reasonable time.

Like anyone else struggling with their mental health who didn't want to bother a doctor unless I had to, I turned to google for advice. Mostly, I found phone numbers for helplines and instructions to watch my diet, but there was also a consistent message to establish a routine.

At first, that didn't seem useful. I had a routine. I'd had it for months and nothing had changed. But it seemed to be worth a try, so I dug around until I found a pen that worked, and wrote out what is possibly the most unimpressive to-do list that the world has ever seen.

It worked. It probably shouldn't have; I don't think I've read it for over a week at this point because I already know exactly what it says, and half the time I don't actually follow along with what it tells me to do anyway, even if only because I woke up too late for my 7.00: wake up, time's a-wastin' instruction to do me any good.

But the fact that it's there, taped to my bedside table where I can see it every morning, gives me some sort of boost that I found myself lacking before. It feels like there is some other, more hopeful version of myself standing behind me saying, 'You can do this! Look at this thing, it has swear words in it, it can't be that hard!'

It's a funny thing, the way small changes can have such a huge impact. I think that it goes to show just how much our experiences of day-to-day life are impacted by our mental state. No one likes to feel stuck in their own life. We all want to keep moving forward, to experience new things and grow as people, but it isn't always as easy as just wanting to do something, especially if circumstances are against you. Sometimes you need a ratty old piece of notebook paper with simple instructions on it to help you find hope again.

This year, I hope, is going to be significantly better than the last. Global pandemic aside, I want to finally get my driving license. Write more, maybe get a book published if I can ever think of a decent plot. Take some sort of martial arts class, or learn a new sort of craft, like knitting, maybe. If I manage these things, then I'm almost certainly going to end up deviating further and further from my list, but I don't think that I'll change it.

I like to think that it will become a reminder, however long it lasts, because let's face it, the paper quality is low and stuff happens. But I like to think that next January I might get to look back at it, read it through again, and be happy that my life has ended up so much more than the bare minimum that I gave myself to work with at the start of this year. To smile at the reminder that I have a baseline to fall back on, even if I hardly ever need to.

Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic - no-one knows whats really going to happen - but I think it's been earned. If giving myself some small guidelines for every day can improve my life so much, why shouldn't I try and give myself some slightly bigger ones? The worst that will happen is that I won't succeed, and the thing about not succeeding is that you can always try again.

I've never been one for solid plans. I like to have wiggle room, so that I can improvise if necessary. However, that doesn't mean that I can't give myself something to work towards, and if that means writing a few more instructions down on terrible old notebook paper, then I've heard of far worse things.

It's 7.00 in the morning of my life. Time's a-wastin'.