November 22, 2011

• A Cluttered Mind

  After that last post about insecurity, I am wanting to go a lot less deep and a lot less personal! 

  I had "posting-regret" about that one.  I felt like maybe I was just.a.tad too honest.  Like there are some things that you just maybe shouldn't put "out there."  I felt like I should have put in some qualifications like "I am not a total screwball" and "Yes, I have lots of normal relationships" and "No, I am not always paranoid that people don't like me" and "No, you don't have to meet this certain list of requirements to be my friend."

  But it is what it is.

   

  So...moving on...

  to a current topic that is on my mind.

  It kind of started with this quote I read a while back on Pinterest.

  "If you want to know where your heart is,

   look where your mind wanders."

   

  It seemed pretty profound.  So I started noticing and analyzing where my mind would tend to wander when it was "idle".

  The result was kind of disappointing and disconcerting but also a little encouraging, maybe.

  It did NOT reveal some secret desire or longing that I fantascized about. My mind didn't wander to a discontented state of thinking of things I wish I had.  I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about the past and how I should have done things differently.  My mind didn't even wander to my husband and kids, although that may have been a good place to go.

  In my mind's "downtime", there was a consistant thought pattern.

  My TO DO list!!

  When I would have a minute where nothing else urgent was occupying my mind, I would find myself often thinking about what I needed to remember/get done/accomplish yet that hour/day/week.

  Sad but true.

   

  Fast forward a few weeks or months and I am reading through this book called "Present Perfect."

  The second chapter talks about how we tend to spend a lot of our time living in the past or the future, when the present moment is what really counts and the present moment is where we can choose to surrender our life and our words and our actions to the Holy Spirit and to God's leading.

  So I started to think about whether I do a lot of thinking about the past or the future.

  I find that I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the past. (Not on a daily basis.  By times I do.)

  But the future...

  We're back to the To Do list.

  I spend an inordinate amount of mental energy and time thinking about the future. Not in worrying about it or thinking "I wonder how this or that will work out" (although, again, by times I do that) but just keeping my "To-Do" list organized in my head.

  I am constantly paranoid that I will forget something, so I repeat and repeat to myself my list of things I need to do and remember.  Probably sometimes as often as 15 or 20 times from time of knowing something is coming up or needing to be done until I actually get it mentally crossed off and finished.

  I have a calendar.  It is on the wall by the kitchen. I do write things down.  But mostly just the "major" type of things. Appointments, social plans, etc.

  Let me give you an example of how my system "works" (or in this case, does NOT work).

  Derrick had "PJ Day" at school on Monday of this week.

  I got the note home from school. I wrote it on the calendar.

  I probably glanced at it at least 6 times. I probably thought of it another couple of times.

  But I am still worried that within the 45 minute time slot that I need to remind him about PJ day, I will forget to mention it or forget to look at the calendar.

  So I made a sticky note (brightly colored) to put on the counter to remind me.

  I did remember. (Ironically enough, Derrick chose not to wear PJ's to school.  Seriously, kid??? Could you not have decided this on Friday or something?)

  But, this is one VERY small detail in my life which involves 3 children, a husband, friends, family, and running a household.

  When I was talking with my sisters yesterday about this problem, Debbie expressed GREAT surprise that I, of all people, do not have SOME sort of very organized and efficent system for keeping track of all the details of my life.

  Well. Here's the honest truth. I don't.

  I used to be able to just remember everything.

  That is no longer working.

  I have tried many things, including using a Palm Pilot organizer, using my cell phone calendar program, using a paper organizer/planner, writing things down the calendar on my wall, sticky notes, etc.

  See, this is what happens to me. I put it in the planner or on the calendar and then later, as I am running through my mental "To Do" list, I think "Wait?? Did I write that down or not?" and then I stress about that.

  I am at work part of the time and at home part of the time, so my calendar is not always with me. Nor is my purse. (Well, it is at work, but out in the van)

  I hate the time that it takes to write down stuff that I probably will remember anyway.

  Another problem with the calendar or a planner of some sort: I tend to forget to look at it at the appropriate times, thereby STILL forgetting things.

  Then there was the "Perfect Storm" of forgetfulness this spring that I may have blogged about where in one or two weeks I

  a) Forgot that Kendall had 4-H and he had to sit on the curb afterwards for 45 minutes waiting for me to show up

  b) I forgot that I was in charge of snack for Derrick's classroom

  c) I forgot that Kendall's kindergarten graduation was that week and if someone had not by chance mentioned it, I would have totally missed it.  How awful would that have been.

  d) I lost faith in myself and my abilities to remember and my perception of myself as kind of "having it together" when it comes to organization and running a household kind of went out the window.

   

  So here is what I am looking for.

  Detailed ideas on how your remember everything and how you organize your life and plans and how you free up your mental space to think more important things than your perpetual list of things to do or to remember. Do you routinely forget things?  Are you OK with that?

  I have a feeling that if I don't figure this out soon, it just might be the thing that sends me to the insane asylum.

  • 12:41 pm
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