Erasing the calendar

I've decided that my room needs a good cleaning, and as my eyes turn to the corner of the room from which my adventures in cleaning always begin, I see a whiteboard calendar that hasn't been updated since mid-last-semester. I see this calendar every time I clean (which, to be fair, has not been near enough times since mid-last-semester). And I can never bring myself to erase it.

Properly situated, it is a rectangle that is longer horizontally than it is vertically with squares for each date. I am sure you get the general idea of a calendar. Well, one weekend last semester, I decided to make myself a to-do list, so, standing the calendar vertically on its end, one can see in green writing a long list of the various things I intended to accomplish with red lines marking out the ones I actually did accomplish and red commentary out to the side.

This was one busy weekend, and every time I look at the calendar, I remember it. I was studying for the GREs, finalizing what grad schools to apply to, getting packets of information ready for my recommenders, finishing my statement of purpose, reading tons of books for exciting classes, writing lots of essays, planning three major research papers, and had various sorts of appointments and social thingies that couldn't be avoided.

Just looking at the list is overwhelming. I can see in the partially-knocked out items and the red-lettered frustration out to the sides of items ("ha...," "I suck." "(as good as it's gonna get this weekend)," or "AHH AM GOING TO DIE") that I made it through. I finished all this stuff, and I did a good-enough job on most of them. I did miss some of the social things, I see. I entirely skipped an appointment. And I know that, in the end, the GRE did not go wonderfully. Yet, despite the fact that I was certain that I was going to die, I made it through that weekend, those to-do items, and that semester.

So, I kind of don't want to erase it. It may look like laziness. But it always reminds me that no matter how hectic everything is, I will get through it and look back on it and laugh. Or at least look back on it and be glad it's over with.