Write Lightning is a blog from writer Deb Thompson.
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)
Fri, Apr 08 2005
Organization Is The Enemy
Organized people have it easy. They always have a system for everything. They either don't have many things to organize or they have lots of room to make little receptacles for all their things. Sometimes they pay someone else to clean and organize for them. Many of them have tidy lives that include no messy hobbies or creative brainstorming corners.
I've never been naturally organized. As a child I had no one place to keep my things and I think it did something to my brain processes. Clutter and scattered resources somehow became a thing of comfort and familiarity. I must confess that I even see organization as a waste of time for some areas of life. I know people who spend so much time cleaning and organizing their hobby and work materials that they rarely complete any projects or do anything fun with all their stuff. For them, the sorting of the stuff seems to be comforting in itself.
The funny thing is that I can often find a paper in a crowded stack faster than I can if I put it into a color-coded or alphabatized file. I end up forgetting if blue is for business or recipes--or if I filed "Cruising to Alaska" under "A" for Alaska or "C" for Cruising.
This also makes blog postings difficult. There are times when a blog post would fit under 2 or 3 different categories. I have to choose one, which is another form of torture for those of us who are organizationally challenged. As soon as I pick one category I wonder if the other choice would have been better.
Whenever Friday comes along I never feel as though I've accomplished all I wanted to do in a given week. But if I've created art or enjoyed the art and work of others I get a much bigger sense of satisfaction than I do if I've cleaned out all the closets. I just can't seem to equate de-cluttering and sorting with the unique lift that the creative process gives me.
Today's Friday tasks include laundry, vacuuming the bedroom, spending an hour verifying information on festivals for the May Review, rubber stamping a decorative bookmark and cooking dinner. I guess I could agonize over it all. I could berate myself for not being the organized type who leaps up and not only vacuums with precision, but wipes down the vacuum when finished and drops that soiled wipe cloth right into one of those loads of laundry. But the hard truth is that I can't even remember where I put the cleaning cloths the last time I got too big for my britches and decided to try to reform and get organized. Maybe I'll just have a quick look for those cloths near the rubber stamps. I have to pass those on the way to get the vacuum cleaner anyway.
posted at: 10:27 | category: /Writing Life | link to this entry
Organized people have it easy. They always have a system for everything. They either don't have many things to organize or they have lots of room to make little receptacles for all their things. Sometimes they pay someone else to clean and organize for them. Many of them have tidy lives that include no messy hobbies or creative brainstorming corners.
I've never been naturally organized. As a child I had no one place to keep my things and I think it did something to my brain processes. Clutter and scattered resources somehow became a thing of comfort and familiarity. I must confess that I even see organization as a waste of time for some areas of life. I know people who spend so much time cleaning and organizing their hobby and work materials that they rarely complete any projects or do anything fun with all their stuff. For them, the sorting of the stuff seems to be comforting in itself.
The funny thing is that I can often find a paper in a crowded stack faster than I can if I put it into a color-coded or alphabatized file. I end up forgetting if blue is for business or recipes--or if I filed "Cruising to Alaska" under "A" for Alaska or "C" for Cruising.
This also makes blog postings difficult. There are times when a blog post would fit under 2 or 3 different categories. I have to choose one, which is another form of torture for those of us who are organizationally challenged. As soon as I pick one category I wonder if the other choice would have been better.
Whenever Friday comes along I never feel as though I've accomplished all I wanted to do in a given week. But if I've created art or enjoyed the art and work of others I get a much bigger sense of satisfaction than I do if I've cleaned out all the closets. I just can't seem to equate de-cluttering and sorting with the unique lift that the creative process gives me.
Today's Friday tasks include laundry, vacuuming the bedroom, spending an hour verifying information on festivals for the May Review, rubber stamping a decorative bookmark and cooking dinner. I guess I could agonize over it all. I could berate myself for not being the organized type who leaps up and not only vacuums with precision, but wipes down the vacuum when finished and drops that soiled wipe cloth right into one of those loads of laundry. But the hard truth is that I can't even remember where I put the cleaning cloths the last time I got too big for my britches and decided to try to reform and get organized. Maybe I'll just have a quick look for those cloths near the rubber stamps. I have to pass those on the way to get the vacuum cleaner anyway.
posted at: 10:27 | category: /Writing Life | link to this entry
