My list-making is genetic. My mom uses any rational surface as a notepad for her lists, including the margins of church bulletins, empty space on envelopes, or the backs of flyers for the neighborhood kid mowing lawns. She makes lists beyond just your generic to-do. She chronicles topics to discuss with her pastor about the next pitch-in dinner, toothpaste brands her dentist recommended for teeth sensitivity, when the next Costco sale ends and when the one after that begins. Growing up I thought her lists were the funniest thing in the world. In hindsight, her lists are a clear marker of an adult with organizational skills. But in my childhood her marginalia was a punchline; an oft repeated line when cleaning up around the house was “Mom, do we need to keep this [item]? It has a list on it.”
And as karma would have it, the thing I mercilessly teased my mother about became my own behavior too. Somewhere after the age of 22 my life expanded beyond my own memory’s capabilities. Oil changes and books to read and appointment reminders and recommended restaurants each required their own home beyond my head. I quickly learned the value of a list. Why was this so funny to me as a teenager? I attribute this to the way children flaunt that they can run faster than their parents or can eat more junk food without gaining weight. Like, yes, of course you can — you’re 13 and your parent is 48. After accepting that fact that I needed to embrace lists, I wadded into it with an ongoing handwritten to-do list in the back of my planner. Once this became too massive it transformed into a categorized series of half-handwritten half-typed to-do lists, which then branched into a family of mostly virtual lists that live in Google Docs, my email drafts, my phone notes app, and Trello. At one point I made a list of all the places I was keeping a list. I envy my mom being able to sweep up her lists and stack them in a neat pile — I just have to accept that I will perpetually have at least five tabs open at all times.
My biggest and baddest list is a Google Doc called “good websites” that I curated in order to not feel like an idiot when spending time online.
How to best spend one’s time on the Internet is a uniquely modern issue. When I was in elementary school I primarily used the computers at school to battle my classmates in typing speed tests. When we got a bulky beige computer at home, my sister and I played Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego and other brainteaser puzzle games. When we got access to the Internet, I had my tidy handful of websites that I never ventured from (Neopets, Webkinz, Club Penguin, etc.). Deciding where to spend my time online, or even just on a desktop, was rarely a mulled-over decision. So when I realized over the past year or so that I was growing tired of my infinite scroll on social media, I started to actively search for websites where I could spend time and come out the other side not necessarily a better person but at least not a worse one.
The first site I included on my “good websites” Google Doc is Zooniverse, a science portal that uses volunteers to further environmental or social research. Scientists upload relatively simple but giant sets of work that need completing, like thousands of images that may or may not contain a nearly extinct animal or hundreds of handwritten draft cards that need transcribed. It’s truly a pleasure to log into Zooniverse, start clicking away on bee colony migrations or constellation identifications or transcriptions of Victorian menus and then realize it’s been two hours since I’ve last blinked. I don’t ever feel bad after spending time here.
Later I added Google Arts & Culture, a sleek Google platform that hosts thousands and thousands of pieces of art. It has virtual tours of cultural centers across the globe, including entire museum collections/exhibits as well as 3D renderings of historic landmarks. They’re also continually collaborating with artists and developers in what they call Google Arts & Culture Experiments where technology meets art in ways that go beyond my own vocabulary. As of writing this there is a machine learning experiment that creates an opera, a modeling experiment that translates your drawing into a piece of historic catalogued art, and an experiment that has indexed virtually every literary figure on a giant map and correlates their work as mountains, streams, or gulfs. I realize that I’m struggling to describe this section of Google Arts & Culture so I’ll stop trying now. I always, always feel smarter after spending time here.
My most recent addition to my “good websites” list is My 90’s TV, a simulator that functions as a TV set full of 90’s media (including cartoons, talk shows and news segments, soap operas, music videos, movies, and on and on and on). There’s just something about listening to the low hum of commercials from my youth that reminds me to breath. I feel at peace after spending time here.
I’m routinely adding (and removing) sites from this Google Doc as I better learn my way around the Internet again. I’ve always known where to go if I want to disappear from myself for a few hours (YouTube videos about historic home preservation) but my “good websites” list has helped me be able to spend time online without fully disconnecting And to think, if I continued thinking making highly specific lists was a thing only my mom did I would never ever be able to remember that I can browse The Bureau of Suspended Objects’ archives or view high quality historic images of my hometown online. My other specific lists include fears to overcome, foods that trigger IBS, and the John Irving books I own. Without these, I’d likely forget to learn how to ice skate without crying, to watch my fiber intake, or that I already own a copy of A Son of the Circus.
I have my mom to thank for teaching me the art of making lists. So: Thanks, mom.
Jenny Winstead-Rodriguez 