Alex and Claire | The Two Lists

TEXT THREAD 9:07A

Alex:
Morning audit. Three meetings already added.
Forecast still looks caffeinated.

Claire:
Careful. That sounded like the old fire talking.

Alex:
Come on. That is a low flame joke at best.

Claire:
Even low flames can scorch if you forget to look.

Alex:
I remember.
I am just trying to keep the embers friendly.

Claire:
Good. Start with what actually matters today.

Alex:
Proposal is almost done. Just polishing commas and pretending it is brilliance.

Claire:
I believe in you.
Mostly.

Alex:
Mostly belief still counts.
Also signed up for two new initiatives. Because momentum.

Claire:
Momentum is how people trip in public.

Alex:
I will take that risk. The walkway is moving anyway.

Claire:
Have you ever noticed that every time you say yes, something else quietly gets demoted to someday?

Alex:
I do not like where this is going.

Claire:
Every list you write creates another list someone else could write.
The things you chose not to do.

Alex:
That feels like philosophy with a hangover.

Claire:
Or clarity with its hair pulled back.
Either way, it still asks the question.

Alex:
Which is what?
That I should stop trying to outrun my calendar?

Claire:
That you should look at who keeps losing when you keep adding.

EMAIL
Subject: The second list

Claire —

I tried your exercise.
I pretended a stranger was keeping score of what I skipped.
Turns out the stranger is not so strange.

Dinner with my sister that has been postponed into folklore.
A conversation with my mother that is stuck in my drafts folder.
A book I bought because it would make me wiser. It looks untouched and very patient.
Leaving the office before the sun sets just once to see what color daylight actually is in late October.

Everything I add to my plate borrows from people who had it first.

Does everyone do this?
Or am I the only one robbing tomorrow to feel productive today?

Relieved that proposal is done
Still bothered by the math

A

Claire → Alex
Re: The second list

Alex —

It is normal.
It is also how people lose the things they meant to keep.

Good work is still work.
It asks to be fed.
And hunger is not a sign of virtue.

Ask your second list a different question:
Which of these losses will cost more if you repeat it next week?

Then start trading yes for yes
Not yes for disappearance.

The right things want a place at the table too.

C

TEXT THREAD

Alex:
The right things are picky.
They want time and daylight and attention with a pulse.

Claire:
Of course they do. We are alive.

Alex:
So I am caught up on everything
except the lives that actually matter.
Classic Alex move.

Claire:
Plates break.
People do too.
Choose carefully what you keep in the air.

Alex:
Fine. One item moves back to the first list.
But only one.
And only because you are annoyingly convincing.

Claire:
Progress is still progress.
Even if it sulks on the way in.

Alex:
I will take that as praise.

Alex — Late Evening

For once he closed the laptop without apology
and sat long enough to hear the silence resist
then give in.

He imagined a thin sheet of paper taped behind the first list
names and promises and one favorite book
all written in a quieter ink
waiting for him to notice.

Maybe purpose was not found by stacking more tasks on top.
Maybe it hid in what he refused to sacrifice again.

He let tomorrow stay where it belonged.
Then he turned off the light before the room could argue.