The Organizing Journey Day 3

Day 3 – Wow, that was embarrassing!

The day started at 5am… weed-eating, mowing, then taking the car in for an oil change.  At 10am I was really hungry so made breakfast, sat down, took one bite and… hear a knock at the door.

For the first time in my life, I’d forgotten I’d made arrangements to teach that day (to be fair to my poor old brain, I’d made the arrangements a month ago and a bunch of really stressful things happened in between).  My embarrassment was from head to toe.  I took her into the studio (which was a disaster, but it is what it is) and asked for three minutes… at which point I shoveled another bite of food into my mouth, made sure the bathroom was semi-decent, then got back into the studio and cleared a spot for her to work.

It ended up okay.  She made an absolutely gorgeous bracelet.  I love love love seeing what my students make.  They amaze me 100%.

Why am I not talking about organizing?  I had a moment today when I said to myself, “You need to not post this every day.  You are NOT cleaning/organizing anything.  You are constantly distracted.  Why don’t you just do blog posts only when you actually have something related to organizing to talk about?” 

Then the other side of me (internal dialogues are a way of life for me) said, “You know why?  Because this is reality.  This is what it’s like to try to organize a house.  I’m constantly distracted.  I can’t wait for the perfect moment.  There will never BE a perfect moment.  There’s no month or week or even day when I am 100% free to do as I please so get used to that and deal with it.”

I can’t be alone.  Don’t we all try to do things with the best of intentions and constantly find those intentions on the back-burner?

As a perfectionist (this is NOT a compliment), I know how easy it is to fall into the trap of not doing something unless/until it can be perfect.  Guess what?  That’s the easiest way to not get anything done… ever.  So I’m sticking this out.  Luckily my readers don’t have to.  Ha!  They can skip my blog posts any time they want, but I want to write this daily to prove to myself that I can do what I can when I can and still have forward momentum, and the not giving up means some day I will achieve the end result.

Anyway, four hours later, I went back and finished breakfast, and now I’m back to cleaning/organizing.  Switching rooms, though.  The detailed organization of the studio will have to wait because my kitchen and living room area are pure chaos.  I’m not going to beat myself up about this. 

From mid-May until the first week in June I was working non-stop on the largest custom order I’ve ever had.  As soon as that was done and delivered, I got a custom request I couldn’t turn down (family).  I struggled with that in the two days before I was due to leave the country.  Ugh!  What stress.  It didn’t work, I got an extension, went to Mexico for 9 days, came back, dealt with car problems, then drove to Los Angeles for my son’s wedding…

My new daughter-in-law’s graduation from UCLA with a Masters in Teaching…

My son’s graduation from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics…

And my son’s birthday…

Drove back from Los Angeles, took my daughter to the airport (after she left a bunch of stuff in my house so she can drive her car across country after graduating from Brown)…

… and was planning on starting my organization/cleaning thing.

So things and people came and went for the past month with me not having a single free second to keep up with any of it.  That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

Reminds me of a funny passage I read yesterday in Christopher Moore’s wonderful book “Lamb”.  One of the characters is being trained by a Buddhist monk to “be in the moment, completely aware of the now, no past, no future, nothing dividing us from everything that is.”

The character replies, “It’s hard for me… to stay in the moment.  Without the past, where is the guilt?  And without the future, where is the dread? And without the guilt and dread, who am I?”

These could be my words.  Sad, but true.

Any of my readers can relate to any of this?  Being overwhelmed with "things to do"?  Constantly being distracted when trying to accomplish something?  Feeling like it has to be perfect or you don't want to do it?  I'd love to hear from you.  Leave me a comment.  

Anyway, I’m actually signing off now and will show you tomorrow (hopefully) photos of my progress in the kitchen.  

To see the beginning of this journey, click here.