Remember back in junior high and high school when they handed out school agendas to teach you organizational skills? And then to make it even worse your teachers forced you to keep them updated with all of your homework assignments, projects, and tests and had the audacity to check it throughout the semester to make sure you were using it? Well, if you don’t I’m sure most of those of us who do would pat you on the back and let you know you dodged an educational bullet. However, I loved my agenda. I loved writing my daily activities and assignments and keeping them pretty and color-coded. I, especially, loved the thrill of getting to check out each entry as it was completed. Type A, much?

Nowadays, I carry around a bright pink Alife daily planner that within its 52 weekly pages contains my life. Sharpie scrawled notes of work projects and meetings, birthdays, social events, bill due dates, phone conversations, and personal goals are just the beginning of what this holy grail of Laurel holds. Today as I was updating the upcoming events that I needed to make sure I remembered and filling in the non-scheduled happenings of the past week, I realized that the square for this evening was blank. Blank squares are a rarity in my world, and I found myself pondering at work what I would fill this space with. Should I have dinner with a friend? See a movie? Was there something I needed to do that I had forgotten? But, what sounded best to me was a night of nothing. No tasks… no chores… no socializing… nothing.

So I headed home with nothingness on my brain. What a silly notion that was! Instead of nothing, I spent an hour making a birthday card with a neighborhood child for her mom and then spent an hour talking on the phone to one of my dearest friends. I did four loads of laundry and scrubbed my toilet and shower. I wrote in 12 various card for friends who were having birthdays, had been sick, or just needed a simple ‘hello’ and delivered them to the mailbox. I submitted my monthly CaresTeams reports and put together three ‘New Baby’ gift bags for new mothers in the apartment complex. I listened to and reviewed two albums for the FirstListen project, and now at 11:30 pm, I’m here with you. I don’t know about you but from now on I’m gonna make sure there’s something scheduled for each day because these nights of nothing are exhausting.