💬 Items on my to-do list that have outlived 3 different notebooks

I have a to-do list in my phone and 1 item has been on it since last August. Return neighbour's ladder. It's a 6 foot aluminium ladder. It's been in my hallway for 14 months. I walk around it every morning. My neighbour Praveen hasn't asked for it. That's what makes it worse. He's just too polite. Every Sunday I carry it to the door, put it down, and go back for chai. It's a ritual now. There are 4 other items from last year. Get a haircut before my cousin's wedding. That wedding was in January. Change the lock on the back door. I've bought the lock. It's in a drawer since October. Email the electricity office about the meter reading, which would take 3 minutes. I've been avoiding it for 5 months. Frame the photo from my grandmother's birthday. The frame is in the same drawer as the lock. The things I finish quickly never even touch the list. Pay rent, answer my mother, buy milk. All done in minutes. It's only the ones with no date. Nobody is waiting, so nothing bad happens. The ladder doesn't care. I tried a new notebook in June. Wrote everything again on page 1, with a pen. Felt great for 4 days. By page 3 it was the same list in different handwriting. The ladder was still there. 4th line, in bold. Last Sunday I finally took the ladder to Praveen's door. I knocked. His wife answered and said, oh, you can keep it. They bought a new one in the spring. They'd forgotten they ever lent it to me. So the ladder is mine now. I crossed it off. It took 1 second and it felt cheap. Then I added Sell ladder. I'm not joking. It's the first item on the new page.

Fourteen months with a ladder in the hallway is an achievement. My version is a pressure cooker borrowed from my neighbour, now 2 years old.

This is my whole life. Half my list is the same 3 things moved to a new page every Monday. Renew passport. Fix the bathroom tap. Call Asif. Those 3 have been there since June.