Fighting the urge to list

Or itemize, or catalog, or chronicle, or sort, or categorize, etc.

During my junior year of college, I took a class called Listicle Literature. I will preface by saying that this was an accident — I meant to sign up for a course on American horror novels which fell under the same English 300 umbrella. I should also mention this course concentrated on Old English literature, which, apparently, is not Shakespearean, old-timey, where art thou English, but an entirely different language with different letters that I had never studied.

The professor dressed in strange clothes and resembled Snow White. She had fair skin, short black hair which she styled into bangs and wore pulled back into a low bun, and she always wore a modern-renaissance-esque floor-length dress, flowing at the skirt and corseted at the waist.

For obvious reasons, I considered dropping the class. But frankly, I was too lazy to find a replacement — the Dracula class met at a time that conflicted with a mandatory course and I was going abroad at the semester’s end. No one actually knew how to read Old English, right?

Wrong. I was the only one who hadn’t read “Beowulf,” whatever the fuck that is, aside from a few stragglers who were also distracted during class registration.

Flash forward to the end of the semester: I still didn’t understand Old English (how to read it or what it is), but I did grasp the greater meaning of the class: lists are everywhere.

According to the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, also known as the Ultimate Ensemble Theory, the universe is a mathematical object. Math is not something that describes the universe, but is the universe. I’m right-brained, so I don’t know what that means — I Googled “how are numbers the foundation of the universe” to find the name of the theory that I was pretty sure existed. Here’s the through line: lists are like the mathematical equations of written language. Overtly and covertly, they are everywhere; wrinkled in hands in grocery stores, scribbled in agendas; playlists, movie rankings, poems, tables of contents, any article with subheadings.

I’ve always been a fan of the list. My notes app is filled with an embarrassing amount of the “to-do” variety, emphasizing unnecessary action items like make coffee, shower and watch new episode of Tell Me Lies. Though I rarely stick to my self-made syllabi, creating a list makes me feel good about going into a new day.

I didn’t realize just how much I love to list until I started writing creatively. In journalism school, we were taught about service stories and H2s, simple ways to break up information without relying on intricate narrative transitions. With a subhead, you’re allowed to completely change topics without “therefore,” “moreover,” or even a cheeky “nevertheless.” Who knew?!

But it is time for me to break up with lists, at least for a little while.

I’ve become too reliant on their ease, the way they invalidate the need for a flowing narrative. And listicle blogging is kind of offensive, right? Who am I to give you tips and tricks, organized under cute mini headlines and forced into small paragraphs that fit the chosen sub-theme. I don’t even know what I’m talking about.

Listing with intention would be a different story, but I’ve gone off the rails, fallen off the wagon. I’ve listed too close to the sun.

I am officially stepping away from the listicle, fighting my female instinct to gather and organize, and forcing myself to transition, to continue, to progress.

Goodbye for now, old friend. Subheads are soooooooo last season.