Summer Syllabus

It's not a "to-do" list

Anyone who knows me knows that I am rather fond of spreadsheets. I like to strategize my life into little lists. Chunks make the whole manageable. I also find it deeply pleasurable to cross something off my list. I’ve done a good job (by my standards anyway), and this motivates me to complete the next thing. Is this entirely healthy? For a while, I thought it was, but now I’m not so sure.

It’s not that lists are unhealthy, but maybe the obsessive making and unmaking—and the tracking of all this—is abnormal. Shouldn’t I be able to keep track of what needs to be done without a color-coded journal? How worth my time is all this stuff, anyway?

I started noticing my compulsion when I downloaded the new Finch app. Finch is a habit-tracking app that also functions like a game. You are given a small bird to “raise.” As you check off more goals, the bird grows and goes on adventures. Your reward for doing is more than just personal satisfaction. There is tangible reward in watching my bird, Chocoflan, wander around and play with her friends. She’s like a Tamagotchi for deeply unwell Type A girls.

To advance my bird, I noticed that I started putting things on my to-do list that were really unnecessary. At one point, I put “Check something off my to-do list” on my to-do list. This could be an argument against the gamification of wellness, but I’ll keep this essay personal. Why am I so concerned with constantly doing?

Obviously, there are things I need to get done, but I find that I’ve even made work out of checking off leisure activities, like reading and watching movies. While I love Goodreads and Letterboxd, it does give me anxiety to look at my want-to-read list and watchlist. There’s nothing I need to do except enjoy myself…right?

Last year, I made an extensive summer to-do list to keep myself occupied during the long, languid days. I think I failed most of the stuff on that list, and it made me miserable. I don’t like summer. I hate the heat, the slowness—I hate that I was born, etc. I hate feeling like I need to be doing something. In the winter, it’s easier to do nothing, but in summer, “nothing” feels inappropriate.

This year, I’ve made myself a summer budget, and if I actually want to get a handle on my debt, I have to live like a monk for the next 78 years. Just kidding. But most of what I make this year has to go towards paying off my credit card debt. I want to change my life next year, and to do that, I need to shake off some of this baggage. So, nothing is about all I can afford. Really, I want to get better at sipping and savoring. I think a lot of people have a compulsion to accomplish as much as possible early on, but what’s really being achieved if I can’t even remember some of the books I’ve read in my early 20s?

I find I have this need to fill my days with stuff. A day without stuff is wasted, right? But when did this become true?

Like any discussion worth having, it’s complex. Life needs to be lived, but intentionally. The stuff I build my days around should have intrinsic worth. This is not to say that every movie I watch, book I read, or meal I eat needs to be life-changing, but if I’m doing something to do it, then I’m not better for it.

This summer, I want to be more intentional about how I fill my days. Because I am not reformed, I have made myself a small summer syllabus of things I want to do, but these things are crafted with intent, and, if anything, they’re more like suggestions for how to spend my time. A lot of the things on this list demonstrate the slowness of completion. These are “tasks” that cannot be completed overnight, and that’s why I’m choosing to focus my time and attention on them. I hope to achieve more than just a completed to-do list by the end of the summer.

• Too Much of Life, The Complete Crônicas by Clarice Lispector

  • I bought this collection years ago, after my first year of graduate school. I was trying to build out my personal library, and I had recently developed a love and admiration for Lispector. She remains one of my favorite authors and an inspiration. But the 700+ page collection seemed daunting as a full-time student. And then it felt daunting after I graduated as a full-time employee.
    
    Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a full-time employee (thankfully), but I want to devote my summer to reading this monstrosity. This is not to say I won’t read other books, or even finish this collection. But it’s been sitting on my bookshelf collecting dust for years—the least I can do is give it a go. And, as I said, I love Lispector. I like this as a goal because it facilitates more than just the completion of a novel. I imagine myself outside in the park near my apartment, with my thick book and thicker sunscreen, doing that other thing I keep putting off: Getting tan.
    

• The films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder

  • This is something I’m sure I had on last year’s summer syllabus, and I failed to get through all his films. To be fair, he was quite prolific, and Berlin Alexanderplatz is 900 minutes long.
    
    Thankfully, however, the Criterion Channel is stacked with Fassbinder, and since I’ll be paying for this service forever, I think it’s time I tackled this once more. Long movie nights at home are cheap and comfortable, and I find it oddly satisfying to work through a single director’s oeuvre. Maybe I won’t get through every film, but it will be good to keep trying. Every year, I get closer. Maybe the goal is not to finish but recommit. Fassbinder would probably find that tacky. Maybe I’ll even start a mini Fassbinder film club.
    

• Recipes

  • If you follow me outside of Substack, you know that I love to cook. Really, I love to eat, but cooking has become an essential part of this love. Maybe I have a passion for eating and a love of cooking. People always ask me to post my recipes online, and I’ve been reluctant, mostly because they’re not my recipes, or they’re things I make myself without really taking the time to measure everything out.
    
    Increasingly, I’ve become intrigued by the idea of, at least, building an archive of the meals I love to cook. I don’t intend to become a cooking influencer, but I want to start posting more about cooking. If anything, this will help me remember what it is that I like to eat on the days when take-out calls to me more strongly than usual. Slowly, I intend to post more recipes on here. It’ll still be a blog for all my thoughts and musings, but sometimes you’ll get a recipe in your inbox, too.
    

And that’s it. Seriously, can you believe it? This isn’t everything I want to do during the summer, as I’m sure I’ll read plenty of books, watch many movies, and venture to places far and wide, but these things give my summer structure.

When I’m at a loss for how to spend my time, I can return to my list. Because lists are just guides, not expectations.