Mental to-do list items keep me grounded

Abraham Villarreal
3 min readFeb 20, 2022
Photo by Patrick König on Unsplash

There are certain habits, specific rituals that we have all to go through each day. When we skip out on them we feel like our day is not complete.

For me, the list is getting longer as I get older. It used to be something as simple as my morning cup of black coffee. I would make it at home, or pick it up at the McDonald’s drive-thru. If that didn’t happen, I’d stop by one of my colleague’s work offices to see what they had brewing. They are always willing to share.

Not much of the morning would pass before I’d have a cup of joe to feel like the day was going to be a good one. Now, for some reason, life is a little more rigid, a little more scheduled and there seems more to do on my to-do list.

It’s not the kind of to-do list that is filled with work deadlines or house chores. It’s a basic-life-necessities to-do list. You don’t find it sloppily written on a note paper or as a reminder on your phone calendar. It’s all in your mind. Only you know the items on it and only you know how important they are to you.

Morning coffee, one black cup for me, is on most of our mental to-do lists. For me, there’s also music, cat time, a game of Wordle, a 30-minute walk, reading a chapter of one of those books I started and didn’t finish, and watching or listening to the news before I go to bed.

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Abraham Villarreal

People are interesting. I write about them and what makes them interesting.