I was blindsided again, so I’m using cut-and-paste to save my blog this morning, tightened and edited because I hate to repeat myself. It’s good discipline, though – note Pollyanna shining through. I was discussing downsizing, specifically my recipe collection, but also all the papers I have been culling and filing and adding to my guilt list, i.e. things I have to do something about – soon!! What I need is an agenda:
agenda |əˈjendə|
noun
1 a list of items to be discussed at a formal meeting: the question of nuclear weapons had been removed from the agenda.
• a plan of things to be done or problems to be addressed: he vowed to put jobs at the top of his agenda | the government had its own agenda.
• the underlying intentions or motives of a particular person or group: Miller has his own agenda and it has nothing to do with football.
2 an appointment diary.
ORIGIN early 17th cent. (in the sense ‘things to be done’): from Latin, neuter plural of agendum, gerund of agere ‘do.’
usage:
That’s what I was leading up to, a consideration of the year to come, an agenda: things to be done. What a daunting phrase, but so useful at the beginning of a new year, and very helpful as I try to keep in mind my priorities, especially my age, which brings me back to the recipes. I realized years ago, as I kept collecting cookbooks, that I would never in my lifetime produce all the meals suggested by the recipes in my cookbooks. I stopped buying them but I didn’t stop collecting recipes. Now, with the computer, we can learn online from the experience of thousands of cooks whose ideas we can download and print and keep in file folders on the shelves beside the cookbooks. Oh dear. So part of my downsizing includes going through the recipes. Over the years my tastes and needs have changed. I don’t produce huge or impressive or gourmet dinner parties any more; I go easy on the fat and sugar; I have learned to enjoy new-to-me foods that weren’t available when I was younger. (Where was zucchini when I needed it?) I have become much more realistic about my time and energy and money and so I have become much more selective.
Now, why can’t I do that about my reading and writing? That’s next. And that’s where a new, tough realistic agenda comes in, and a new, tough realistic me. Watch this space!