On the Importance of Lists: Part One

As those who know me well may recognize, I am somewhat obsessive in my organizational habits. This may seem strange to others who know me, have seen my room, and have come to the conclusion that there is nothing of order at all in that chaos. Nevertheless, in some aspects of my life, at least, I am organized.

My primary organizational tool is the list. I love lists. When I was at college, I would list my assignments in the order that they were due and schedule my work accordingly (there’s an added layer of complexity with long-term assignments that required some extra rules). I also have a mental list of the full names of many acquaintances (53 of them). By far my greatest list, however, is what I refer to as my free time cycle.

The idea of my free time cycle is this: the list consists of various chronic projects of mine which I cycle through as I get free time. I started the list in college. You see, I was having some difficulties. I would frequently postpone doing homework by engaging in various time-wasting activities, such as reading mediocre webcomics or watching music videos on YouTube. The problem with this pattern was that I would postpone my homework until the last minute and I wouldn’t even have  been doing things that I particularly liked to do. So I decided that I would make this list and that when I got home I would do a homework assignment, and then, after I was done, I would spend an hour on the next thing on the free time cycle before going back to my homework to repeat the process. It worked well, and I have kept the free time cycle ever since, albeit with some changes as my projects have grown.

Now I’m sure that at this point, some of you are saying “When is he going to show us this list?” To which I say, “Now.” So without further ado, here is my list. Following the list, I will have an explanation of the various points.

Video games

Scriptures

Bestiary

Read

Write

Research

Languages

Church books

Video game making

Webcomics

Music

Classics

Exercise

Biographies

Webcomic Creation

Supplemental Books

Art

Watch

So there you go. An extensive list. Let’s start at the top, shall we? My first entry is “Video games.” This is fairly self-explanatory. However, let me add that I have lists of video games as well. My first list is my “Games of Interest” list. That contains games that I encounter and find worth further consideration. If a game successfully makes it to the next stage, it either goes into my “Games to Get” list or my “Games Wish List.” The difference between these is that the “Games Wish List” is full of games for consoles which I do not yet own, while my “Games to Get” list has games that I could play immediately upon acquisition. Finally, I have my “Games I Own” list, which exists as a way for me to keep track of the games that I have that I need to play. As a side note, let me point out that for the most part, I play my games in alphabetical order. I’m currently playing “Batman: Arkham Asylum.” It’ll be a long time before I get to Xenogears. Now, just for fun, I think I’ll include a sample from my “Games to Get”.

The Last Guardian

Steambot Chronicles

Pandora’s Tower

Xenoblade Chronicles

Race the Sun

Knock-Knock

Windforge

The Adventures of Cookie & Cream

Anachronox

PaRappa the Rapper

Astebreed

Swarm

Spacebase DF-9

Strength of the Sword 3

Duck Game

Among the Sleep

Elemental Gimmick Gear

GoNNER

Moving on, we get to “Scriptures.” I’m pretty unashamedly a Mormon, and one of the things that we’re supposed to do is read regularly from our holy works: the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. My current project regarding these is going through the Book of Mormon and listing themes. It’s the sort of thing that might be cool if you’re Mormon and probably isn’t if you aren’t.

Next we have “Bestiary.” The deal here is that I have a bestiary of mythical creatures that I am compiling for use in one of my fictional universes. I’ve been working on this for a long time, and unfortunately I recently had a setback in the sense that I decided that I was going to find primary sources for as many of the creatures I could and do a good job documenting these sources. What this means is that currently I’m working on a translation of an edition of a Japanese book called Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, a book of illustrations of yōkai (Japanese monsters and spirits) from the eighteenth century. If you guys want, at some point I can either include some stuff from that book or other things I’ve encountered in my bestiary creation. Until then, here’s a list of a few of the beings in my bestiary pre-correction.

Aatxe- A Basque spirit that changes form between a human and a large, fierce red bull

Boobrie- A shapeshifting Scottish monster that often appears in the form of a giant diving bird

Sea Dog- An aquatic dog with scales and webbed feet

Sea Hog- A beast with the tail of a fish, legs of a dragon, and body and head of a boar

Monk Fish- A fish that looks sort of like a monk

Stollenwurm- A beast with the body of a lizard, head of a cat, and a long, ridged tail

Following the bestiary, we have “Read.” Really what this refers to is fictional reading for enjoyment. If we’re being totally honest, it refers to science fiction, fantasy, and the occasional mystery. I’m currently reading Hothouse by Brian Aldiss.

Next, we have “Write.” This is exactly what it seems like. In fact, I am writing this blog post as a result of my current position on the list. I’ve tried writing novels and such, but it’s not really working out right now because so much of my mental energy is going towards my comic. So instead of working on long fiction, we get my blog posts and the occasional bit of short fiction.

We are now at “Research,” which is where I read for the purpose of learning things for my story creation. I am currently reading a lovely book by Ian Mortimer called The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England.

And we come around to “Languages.” This entry is where I work on either learning new languages or working on languages I already sort of know. The only languages that qualify so far are Japanese, German, and Welsh, though I hope to add some more. Currently, of course, my translation of Gazu Hyakki Yagyō is doing double duty as both bestiary work and language work. I think the next language I actively try to learn will be either Irish or Greenlandic.

Next up is “Church books.” This is another reading one and should possibly be called “Religious books” instead. This entry is devoted to the reading of religious books. Whether these include holy books of religions other than my own or whether those go under the later category of “Classics” I am unsure of at the moment. Currently, I’m reading through a set of books released by my church that are about the teachings of various past leaders of the church. I’m currently at Joseph F. Smith, so I’m about a third of the way done.

Now we get to an exciting one: “Video game making.” Did you know I want to make video games? Of course you did. Everyone wants to make video games. What I’m currently doing is working on an outline for a JRPG I want to make. If it ever goes anywhere, maybe I’ll talk more about it.

And at this point, I think I’ll take a breather. We’re halfway through the list, so now is a fine time for an intermission. Part two may come later when I come back around to writing.