schedule (v. tr.): to appoint, assign, or designate for a fixed time.

First, the nerd-out: “Schedule” has a fascinating etymology. Merriam-Webster has it as follows:

Middle English, from Medieval Latin scedula slip, page, charter, from Late Latin schedula slip of paper, diminutive of Latin *scheda strip of papyrus, probably back-formation from Latin schedium impromptu speech, from Greek schedion, from neuter of schedios casual; akin to Greek schedon near at hand, echein to seize, have

American Heritage also mentions that it’s “perhaps akin to [Greek] skhizein, to split. See schizo-.” It’s times like these I really miss the access to the online OED I had at Brown….

Anyhow, the reason for bringing any of this up is that I appear to be woefully unsuited to scheduling my life. For my entire adulthood (roughly the age of 17, when I left for Providence, to the present), I’ve made plans more or less on the fly and more or less only with people who occupied the same fifteen block radius as myself. But with the past six months’ Park Slope diaspora — all my closest friends spattering, like an exploded pustule, into neighborhoods like “Clinton Hill” and “Fort Greene” and “The Haight” — I’ve been forced to face the facts that 1) adults don’t just casually fall into each others’ houses with ten minutes notice, and 2) like it or not, adulthood is upon me, unsuited though I may be to the task.

This first started niggling at me over the summer when it became way way real, but it’s been driven home especially in the past few weeks, as I’ve been trying to arrange both musical rendez-vous(es?) and dates. It is a fucking pain in the ass! And I know (or assume) that most people don’t really think it’s that big a deal — you want to see someone, you make plans, you do them, suck it up you pathetic little bitch — but as someone who often exists in a seemingly eternal present (more on this later), it often feels as though I’m never going to get to hang out with anybody ever.

This particular bout of whining (it is Wednesday, isn’t it?) is made all the more ludicrous by the fact that I’m actually finally becoming capable of this irritating, abstract skill. But that doesn’t make it fun, and it doesn’t make it less contrary to my haphazard, slovenly nature. It does mean that someday, after my combination juice bar/tattoo parlor/adoption agency makes me a chamillionaire, I will hire a personal assistant to keep my schedule for me. Now that’s power.