Dear Dead Kite-flier, you're ruining my life!

Today we're going to deviate from our usual course. Instead of a book that I'm currently reading, buying, stalking, or have just finished, I'm going to monopolize a few of our minutes together to talk about a book that keeps ruining my life.

 
First, I have to get into some blasphemy, so maybe brace yourself or take a minute to go get some coffee or tea. I like to imagine that Heaven (capital H, there) has as one of its many perks, the option to meet all the people that you'd like to have met. Some of them will have lines around them, I imagine, and others will have printed FAQ guides because they're really tired of answering the same questions. This probably flies in the face of Christianity and most other things, but if I'm going to be around for eternity, I will need something to sate my curiosity. Well, one of the first people I'm going to bother in Heaven is Benjamin Franklin, and I'm going to tell him that he kind of ruined my life.

An artistic rendering of the meeting between me and Dear Benny Boy.

It happened like this: Years ago, some ambitious social studies teacher decided that we should read excerpts of Franklin's autobiography. They left out the juicy parts about Franklin's appetite for a party and stuck to his list for self-improvement. Then they made us make one... and I've been trapped in a list ever since. If I remember correctly, Franklin had 13 things on his list and admitted to never being able to balance all of them at once. My current list looks like this:

1. Reading
2. Writing Skyla
3. Other writing
4. Conferences, articles, professional development
5. Teaching prep
6. Housework and errands
7. Family and friends
8. Exercise and meditation
9. Healthy food and vitamins
10. Driving

It exhausts me just to type it and there are goals that are very neglected. Like driving. Remember that song lyrics,"If I was the king of the world, I tell you what I'd do: I'd throw away the bars and the cars and the wars..." - I also would throw away the cars, or at least make sure they came with chauffeurs so that operating them did not lead to me throwing up from fear. Basically, though, my point is that I could have done without Franklin's example and all of this pressure to improve. As we learned with Faust, sometimes books really are the road to damnation! (Or, at least, keeping track of your progress and obsessing over your shortcomings, which is probably the same thing. Sisyphus, remember?)