Atoning for My Organizational Sins
So I'm trying desperately to pull myself out of a hole of disorganization. The past year has been really, really bad. Everything that can be possibly be disorganized, behind and unmaintained is. Pure chaos, from my sleep cycle to my work projects, to errands, and things like seeing the dentist or organizing my taxes. My life has devolved into pure, unadulterated anarchy.
So in a desperate effort to get some sanity back in my life, I'm cleaning house. It started with my stash of gadgets, and is continuing through my work, home and social life. As much as I would love to "catch up", go back and find all the things I missed and try to revive them again, I can only cut my losses at this point. The past can't come back - the deadlines have all whooshed by (with all respect to Douglas Adams, RIP) and there is nothing I can possibly do to turn back time. There. Done. I feel guilt about it at a deep profound level, but that's it, no more. Today is the first day of the rest of my life and all that.
First 2005 is now off the books. It's over. It's gone. I had emails to respond to from June 2005 in my inbox still... sorry, it's just not going to happen. If I didn't respond, or if we never got a chance to meet up, or if something I needed to send you is pending, sorry, but it's gone for good now. I'm sorry it didn't happen, but that's it - we can try again in the future. I'll never get a handle on today if I try to make up for my organizational sins of the past. If I missed an opportunity, pissed off a friend, annoyed a contact, put off a responsibility, avoided tasks or forgot something important, I can only say I'm sorry and apologize at the most profound level of my soul.
I am coming clean. I am prepared to accept the consequences of my complete failure to organize my time and activities in any consistent way. As long as I can move on, I am totally willing to atone for these sins. Just tell me what I need to do and I'll add them to my brand new, sparkly clean to do list. (The one before it had 1000+ unfinished items - so it's gone too.)
There should be a 12 step program for the disorganized: Scatterbrains Anonymous. First step is admitting you can never catch up. The second is figuring out how to make sure it never gets this bad again... I'm still working on that bit.
-Russ