So today I had the thought, the one I have often. It goes something like this “If only I could get organized then…..” and it usually ends with me thinking I need to revisit the flylady website and start” shining my sink” and “dressing to shoes.” Somehow keeping a clean house (or a clean workplace) becomes the answer for everything.
When I used to be a teacher and was very unhappy in my job, I’d use that “get organized” idea to keep me hanging on and hanging in. If I could clean off my desk, have beautifully detailed lesson plans, and stick to a schedule than I would be teacher of the year and I’d love every minute in that classroom. I could never seem to do it though. Getting organized just remained out there as some ambiguous goal that if I finally reached all would be right with my world. The only thing that righted that world was leaving it.
These days I am walking this line between stay-at-home-mom and writer. I feel incredibly inadequate at both of them. So I spend a lot of time thinking about cleaning out closets and cabinets, calculating the ways I could entertain my daughters, and trying to allow time for inspiration. I think about what that schedule might look like. The idea of it excites me, makes me think I’m in control…but I never actually write down the schedule and I certainly don’t follow it. Instead I drift along, hoping that I am as perfect in my girls’ eyes as my mother was in mine and that eventually I will be overwhelmed by the urge to start writing this awesome book series that is slowly inching it’s way into my brain. What I really want is a perfect balance of an amazing career and personal life. What I really want is to move with passion through everything in my life, instead of having the desire to organize it.



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June 11, 2009 at 8:48 am
Lisa
I think that we’re all like that sometimes. Trying to replace the chaos in our minds with order and organization. I’m not much for schedules and I only organize and declutter once in a blue moon, but I feel ya.
June 12, 2009 at 7:42 am
Renee
My mother has a magnet that says, “Creative minds are seldom tidy.” I think that crosses over into other things, as well.
You’ve written TWO novels. Stop beating yourself up.