Saved by the Book (the Notebook, that is)

I was struggling on Sunday, when all this came along to do in a short time.  Frank set the wheels in motion with a phone call.  After some back and forth, we had a deal, and a great deal to do.  My struggle has been a sort of detachment, a feeling at a loss, like swimming in a tub of jello.  I knew I had things to do, and I meandered through them, putting off what I didn't feel like doing and feeling as if I was letting myself put off living.  Beyond that, I didn't feel productive.  Things got done, or they didn't, without much consequence.   There was always tomorrow, even if I wasn't sure what day today was.  Yeeech!  It all seemed so boring, and a lot like wallowing it it, so to speak.  Is that what depression feels like?   

So when Frank visited, and we started signing things, I went looking for something to write on.  A sheet of copy paper would have done (remember when we called it typing paper?), but I grabbed a spiral-bound notebook, and that seemed to change everything.  I started jotting things down, and I knew where I'd find them if I couldn't bring them to mind at once later.  I started noting things I had to do, and I knew where to find them later when I started to feel like tackling them.  I started doing what I needed to do, and, even as I was stymied at one step or another, I just noted what I had done, and what I was waiting for next.  I knew where I'd find what I needed to get caught up and to start again.  

By Tuesday night, I had filled four pages, and I knew what I had done and what I had thought of and not yet tackled.  So far, I had left nothing out, had put off nothing, and ducked none of it.  It expanded to cover more than what Frank had handed us, and I did some planning on other things.  They will all fit there, and will be there when I get up.  I don't need a calendar to make appointments in, and I have a low-tech place to store my to do list.  Not that I object to technology, but it wasn't helping me.  I was letting it pile up, and not feeling that subtle little sense of satisfaction--crossing one off the list, making a little progress, taking the next step.  

My guess is I would have found it again anyway, but I give credit to this notebook.  I was lost without it, and, coincidence or not, I feel like I am alive again.  In terms of life's geometry, the spiral notebook has me spiraling upward again.  Simple, aren't I?  Thanks.