diff --git a/TODO.md b/TODO.md
index d4ba241..8dbc122 100644
--- a/TODO.md
+++ b/TODO.md
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+- [ ] Figure out what the fuck is going on with the soft engineering retrospective post or accept it's broken and rewrite the markdown parser later
 - [ ] add rst or org support and convert markdown handling to custom parser instead of pandoc
 - [ ] process source code blocks with tree sitter https://hackage.haskell.org/package/tree-sitter
     - Alternatively consider skylighting https://hackage.haskell.org/package/skylighting
diff --git a/src/Markdown.hs b/src/Markdown.hs
index f67b41d..0ec8b8b 100644
--- a/src/Markdown.hs
+++ b/src/Markdown.hs
@@ -163,7 +163,7 @@ unorderedListBlock = do
 unorderedListItem :: (Logger m, Token s ~ Char, Stream s, IsString (Tokens s)) => ParserTG s m ListItem
 unorderedListItem = do
   oneOf "*-+"
-  char ' ' <|> char '\t'
+  optional (char ' ' <|> char '\t')
   content <- many $ notFollowedBy lineEnding' *> inlineElement
   lineEnding'
   -- continuations <- many listContinuation