Organization Disaster Case

“Electricity is really just organized lightning.”—George Carlin

My wonderful (a true understatement) wife is perhaps one of the most organized people in the world, at least the known world of “Me”. She is accurate with scheduled appointments. Prompt to do assigned or needed tasks for work and pleasure. All things have a place and she is able to find them with outstanding ease of effort. I also benefit when I need to borrow something of hers as she can either point out its location, or, if it is an item I have used in the past and retrieved, I know where to look…if I remembered to put it away properly.

Then there is the recent case with my back-up staple gun.

Now it will be important to back up a bit and explain my approach to organization. I approach it with a lack of understanding that my brain no longer files away storage locations of things with the clarity that it used to have. A brain that used to run like a brand new computer works more like a Commodore 64 computer from the early 80’s. Google it if you can’t remember that “state-of-the-art” device. Basically it works slowly like it is infected with a virus. Scrambled as well and needing to be de-fragmented like the hard drives of computers. Projects are lying around in various states of completion and incompletion.

• weed wacker that needs a throttle cable (waiting for the part to come in the mail)
• 2nd weed wacker that needs repair if I could figure it out (trying to find the manual)
• boat seat needing to be reupholstered and repaired (trying to find my second staple gun)
• baseball officiating gear that needs to be stored and football officiating gear that needs to be found (just need to take the time to do it)
• garage door that is crooked when it closes (this could take an engineer or a professional garage door mechanic)
• a 1962 Chevy Nova II (more like a skeleton of a car at this point)
• a basement room with drywall hung and first mud applied (trying to find the motivation to plaster)
• fish tank that needs cleaning (just need to take the time to do it)
• lawn tractor #2 won’t start (battery, starter, solenoid?)

The list just goes on like a bad romantic comedy. Or a slow action film.

But when I think about things and put them in perspective, the broken and lost stuff is old like my brain. Old stuff needs to be fixed. Stuff that hasn’t been used in years is gathering dust in spots around my house like my knowledge of college calculus, dwelling in some far-off corner of the gray matter in my skull. So my brain needs to be fixed too. Brain dust is covering it. Picture that if you can. Need to find a “brain-duster-off-er.” I kind of feel like George Carlin looks in the above picture. Or maybe I just need to quit putting so much pressure on it and give it a break. Let it just go where it wants to go and stop forcing it to work so hard. Maybe like water it will flow to the lowest point, scouring itself out while it races to the sea of knowledge.

I would apply Leo Tolstoy’s following quote to the brain as well as to the body as he inferred: “Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies.”

I truly do hinder myself with a desire to remember everything, I need only remember what is available to me, close to my mind’s surface.

And I almost forgot, the back-up staple gun was found where I last used it. In the toolbox I take to the rifle range to attach my targets down range.

How to Forget?

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.--Henry David Thoreau

I need to learn a new skill.

A skill that can help me to be able to see things in a truer light. A light that casts a shadow of truth on objects, people and thoughts. I must learn how I can make space in my cluttered, unfocused mind and that restless spirit of mine that troubles and toys with it. I seem to be seeing many things in new perspective. Bright, new visions. As I am growing older, aging and evolving, the universe of my memories is growing crowded and confused.

I look around me and I am surrounded by so much that talks to me of what I have done in my life. There are the bookshelves filled with the volumes I have read. My favorite authors, collected and shelved for me to see, take down and turn to that certain passage that pleases. A snow goose mount from a special hunt with dear friends. Pictures and autographed baseballs and elephant bookends.

But perhaps I should begin to remove some of these things. Take the books I probably won't read again and donate them. Give away my drawings and art that lies flat and unviewed. Mostly forgotten things. Unused. Should be discarded. Simplify a bit more.

What I truly need to develop is not the ability to remember more, but the ability to forget. Give up certain ways and things. That would bring a peace to me and allow more joy to work it's magic on my life.

Gary Ryan Blair, "The GoalsGuy®", kind of sums up what I am contemplating when he wrote, "Learning is about more than simply acquiring new knowledge and insights; it is also crucial to unlearn old knowledge that has outlived its relevance. Thus, forgetting is probably at least as important as learning.”

Let the forgetting, begin.