Anna wakes up most mornings angry and disappointed. Why? Because her life is not in order. Because she is not who she expected she would be, or who she wanted herself to be, at least not at this stage of her life. She had around ten things on her to-do list yesterday, and two of those are still unticked, meaning they were not done. Her efforts at achieving her desires, those simple desires that everyone has every day, have all but come undone.
That does not happen daily; some days, she wakes up feeling quite at peace. While most of us would celebrate those days, and she sometimes does, more often than not they serve as reminders for her of all the other days, the days come undone. By sundown, such a peaceful day will be disrupted by the incessant, nagging thought she had pushed to the back of her mind: “Why can’t every day be like today?” And thus she begins piling on the pressure to make tomorrow as good, or preferably better than today, at sunset of the day before tomorrow. She also happens to be a “lists” person. She keeps track of everything. And all of these things end up on a list somewhere, if not on a physical sheet of paper she keeps in her purse, then, at least, in some mental storage space.