I have been feeling a bit Benjamin Button this week. Well, strictly speaking I am not a creepy man-baby turning into a disturbingly good looking pensioner, but I do have this eerie feeling that I am progressing and regressing at the same time.
I am particularly concerned about my ability to communicate. Five years ago I had no trouble writing and speaking in complete sentences. I used proper punctuation, capitalisation, and real words that could be found in a dictionary. Now I find myself using some bizarre txt-speech not only when txting (see I can’t even spell out “text”) but in other aspects of my life. Am I 20? I have also noticed my clothes have changed since giving up my real job and going back to school. Of course I don’t wear skirts and jackets anymore, but now I seem to only wear a single pair of jeans which I keep on the floor when they are not being worn. In the morning before I dash off to school I search for the jeans which I know are too dirty to wear when I find them cowering under the bed (think Dr. Seuss and those pale green pants with no one inside them). So am I 12? No, because I also wear crazy mismatched coloured tees and tops like a founding member of the Red Hat society. Am I 80?
I guess I really shouldn’t be concerned whether I am coming or going or evolving or devolving and just enjoy the ride (for as long as I can remember it at least).
I remember my mum used to have a little tombstone on her desk with those words. I have the feeling that organisation will never come for me, but at some point what does it matter? I do keep trying though. Sometimes I think that I switched to an academic career in hopes that people would become more tolerant of my disorganisation. I guess I am hoping for that absent minded professor aura. Although, somehow I doubt that constantly being late (and unprepared) for meetings and trailing bits of paper as I walk down the hall is ever going to be endearing. Annoying? Irritating? Perhaps, but being disorganised is only a loveable quirky personality trait in the movies.
What’s worse, I think my disorganisation is spreading from my habits to my thinking (was it the Wizard of Oz that said, “You, my friend, are a victim of disorganised thinking”). When I write, its a mess lately, so I am really beginning to take this organisation thing a bit more seriously. So how does one get seriously organised? [drum roll] – you buy a diary. Because if life has only taught me one lesson, it is you can buy/consume your way out of any predicament.
So that is how a found myself in the stationary store this morning as I walked to school. Because if I only had a paper diary to schedule my life (electronic calendars don’t count), then I would be completely organised. I did find a few flaws in this line of thinking, though, as I went down the diary aisle. One big problem is that apparently stationary shops have a bias against disorganised people and only carry stock for organised people. This came as a shock to me as I perused the shelves looking for a 2009 calendar, only to find that they are only stocking 2010 calendars. What?! Don’t tell me that I am the only person in Dunedin who has waited 10 1/2 months to buy a diary! There are still a good 80 odd days left in 2009. Who wouldn’t want to pay for and carry around an extra unused 280 pages? Hmm… so what options do I have? Wait for 2010 (appealing, but seems contrary to my goals…), no I did the only reasonable thing I could think of as I realised that I was late and need to get something quick and dash off to school.
I bought a blank book. You know, so I could fill it was my hopes and dreams… yeah, right. I bought a blank book so I could print my Outlook calendar and tape it in to it and spend the rest of my life trying to synchronise them. Fun. Now what did I do with that diary? What happened to my tape dispenser? Who took my printouts off the copier? Where’d I leave the keys to my office….
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