Note to Self...

I’ve been doing a lot of cleaning. Going through reams of old mail, undealt with paper from years past. I come across enigmatic notes to myself like this one, written on the front of an unopened piece of mail:

Sat. 29– after Tgiv.
safety, health
prob. sleeping in church
safety of possessions
don’t know where going exactly

What on earth does this mean? Is it a list of my own making, or was I taking notes from a phone call? Was it a list of prayer requests? If so, why would I or anyone else pray for “safety of possessions”? Does “prob.” stand for “probably” or “problem”? And that last line: “don’t know where going exactly”; what on earth does that mean?

I come across these strange little notes to myself a lot. Usually they're scribbled on unopened envelopes, napkins from restaurants, checking account deposit slips (goodness knows, I don't use them for their intended purpose), and the backs of crumpled old receipts that I fish out of my purse. I write little bits of stories that I think of, odd snippets of conversations that I either overhear or just imagine, bits of remembered dreams, to-do lists, and other random “notes to self.”

Many of them I can remember what their original purpose was, or there is at least enough in the note for me to be able to figure it out. But it is these odd ones that really cause me consternation. They seem important, yet I know that at this point, I'll never again know what they meant. I find these forgotten notes quite disturbing, as they seem to be ellipses in my life. Were they something I should have followed through on? Something I should have done, or resolved, or prayed about? Why were they important enough to write down?

One of my favorite (and most frequent) notes to self are potentially important phone numbers written on the same scraps of paper mentioned above. They are just phone numbers. No names written near them, no notes that might identify to whom the number belongs, no date to even inform me whether the number was written so long ago that I can safely discard it now. In the past, I kept these phone numbers, hastily inscribed on little bits of paper, thinking that maybe they were important and that their identity would come to me when I needed them. But that has never happened. So now I just throw them away, even though it causes me a little distress.

When I find these mysterious little notes, I try to use them as a reminder to myself to write better—more complete and self-explanatory—notes in the future. But I continue to write my enigmatic little notes to myself that run the gamut from the ordinary (Dentist, 10:00 a.m.) to the existential (don't know where going exactly) to the just plain odd (crazy old man with gun standing in road). I wish I would stop doing this, but it seems to just be my way.