Organization or the Total Lack Thereof

Wherein Our Heroine Swings Wildly Between Two Extremes.

I love organization. I love having a place to put things. I love order, and knowing where to find my stuff.

This does not mean I am always a tidy person. "Far from it," I think as I survey the wreckage of the living room. But I strive for tidiness and my brain craves order even as I don't outwardly manifest that craving.

One of the dilemmas that tidiness brings is over-compartmentalization. While I love the idea of everything having its own specific place, too much of this sends me into overload and a bit of cross-pollination helps me to keep spinning ideas around and looking at them from various angles, the better to think creatively about them. I have thought for some time that I need to carry a small notebook around with me to capture the random ideas that seem to fade all-too-quickly from my nonretentive brain. I have a lot of blank notebooks, and some are even in sporadic use for containing Yoga thoughts or interview notes, but I have begun to feel as if the various pieces of my life are locked away from one another. They need to get together and mingle, flirt, and get into fistfights. I needed a portable Mos Eisley Cantina for my thoughts.

My continued joblessness has kept me from making too many discretionary purchases, but this weekend I bit the bullet and purchased one of these little guys. Sturdy and no-nonsense, with plain paper (I may not be able to draw at all, but I like having the option), it has already captured a few thoughts (including this one) for later inclusion into the WoT? It will also act as my repository for Yoga thoughts, quotes, and other musings. My hope is that having a place to put these things will soothe my need for order while also allowing the disparate sections of my life mingle and bump into one another and hopefully spark some interesting combinations.

It's a new hope, if you will.

Posted: Tuesday - January 18, 2005 at 08:34 AM | |