List – noun /lɪst/

This one was a long time coming.
When the duck and I talked to our friend about her work one fateful day, I came to a sudden realization: I thoroughly enjoy lists. While real-life me instantly began using any remotely suitable opportunity to declare this newly denominated character trait (much to the duck’s embarrassment), it took a while until I typed out the proclamation that “I love lists, especially pretty ones.” I am ashamed that, one year later, there still are very few lists on here. To change that, I took the duck and my favorite season (the one that had us believe two years ago that it would be a great idea to post on here 24 days in a row which, of course, it isn’t if you’re a self-confessed lazy person with sudden bouts of perfectionism in the most inconvenient situations) as motivation to finally dedicate a whole post to this obsession.Look at the duck pretending to help me come up with some of my favorite kinds of lists for this post. Here they are:

Finally, a list listing some of my favorite lists

It must be clear by now that the duck and I are huge fans of the festive season. Not only does it bring delicious sweets, weird candle scents, cheesy movies, curious animation ideas, and reasons to grab our camera and go out despite the cold. But it also brings a few bonus lists that we can use to stay organized (by “staying organized,” I mean procrastinating because I much prefer writing about the things I’m supposed to do to actually doing them). That’s enough blabbering for now; here is a list of lists that the duck likes and I love:

• to-do list (the best way to visualize your procrastination – everybody should try it!)
• shopping list (I’ve been writing extensive shopping lists ever since I’ve been doing my own shopping)
• list of ingredients (being peculiar about food, I’ve become somewhat of a pro at perusing them)
• watch list (for streaming services; I doubt I will ever complete one)
• watched-list (I tend to forget what movies I watched, so I started documenting them)
• read-list (I watch way more movies than I read books. Still, I like to write down what I read)
• to-read and to-watch lists (whenever a friend recommends something, I’ll make a note of it for my next book-buying spree or to put on my watch list if it’s ever available to stream at no additional charge)
• Christmas card lists (for all those Christmas cards the duck and I tend to send out whenever we’re not too lazy)
• address list (yeah, I actually use an address list rather than a physical/digital address book – these cards need to go somewhere)
• Christmas present lists (we’re bad at it, but we still have to decide on gifts sometimes)
• wish list (I used to write Christmas and birthday ones when I was younger; these days, it’s more of a “things to get for myself if they’re ever on sale” list. Last month, I actually got to remove the one item that I’d been watching for over a year, thanks to a 20%off Black Friday deal)
• packing list (for the few times the duck and I actually do travel)
• any checklist (any list that we don’t create ourselves but get to complete makes us a thousand times happier than a bouquet of flowers could)
• ballot (it takes less than a minute, but the act of checking these boxes brings me utter joy)
• waitlist (not a huge fan of those, but some waitlists are better than an instant rejection!)

These are some of our more commonly used lists. The duck had the clever idea to set a five-minute timer because otherwise, I would never stop writing. Of course, there also are plenty of specific lists that we tend to only make once, like the list of things to do during a long layover, lists of how my taste in tea or coffee has changed, or what we would bring to a picnic if we were more social.

Well, allowing me to write this list was the duck’s early Christmas present to me, so please address any issues you may have with this post and its enjoyableness to the duck (who did whisper in my ear last night that the “need to express your love for something that is a normal part of most people’s lives can make you seem weird” after gifting me permission to write this. I have a feeling that this might have been a test… that I failed).

What is your stance on lists? Is it even normal to have one? At this point, I don’t even know.