It is so funny to me, how I can live in a world of organization and disorganization all at the same time…and love it! I have this need at one moment to organize and categorize: to make a neat room, update a filing system, clean up my address book, fill in my planner, organize my classroom binders, clean out my car trunk and thin out my wallet. Then in the next moment I feel a need to be messy and unjudging of any of it: to take spontaneous trips, throw my papers whenever, not follow my planner, don’t do my homework, leave my car messy, forget my wallet, be late for an appointment and maybe just not go at all. I have this love of being early, neat, tidy and organized and then a love of being late, messy, dirty, and carefree all in the same mind. I have planned out wonderful trips months in advance and taken trips that I was invited to that afternoon. I have planned out conversations weeks in advance and had others spur of the moment until 4am the next morning. I have been early to every class all semester and then five minutes to every class the next semester. I have lived in a world of 15-minute Outlook time fragments for an entire year and then the next year not looked at Outlook for weeks. Somehow I have lived in both worlds and somehow I haven’t just chosen one over the other.
Maybe the truth is, we don’t have to choose. Maybe considering it Organized vs. Disorganized is just too simple. For example, consider the two sides with words like these:
- Organized - planned, productive, practical, timely, precise, thoughtful, organized, neat, respectful, clean and simple.
- Disorganized - carefree, messy, spontaneous, random, lighthearted, fun, lost, unjudging and relaxed.
Is that reasonable? Can’t we be planned and organized, but ready for spontaneity and fun. Can’t we be carefree and lighthearted but precise and productive? I think we all prove that we can be everyday. I think the real question is how we can find ourselves within organization itself. I can live with Outlook and organize my life in a way that helps me enjoy it more, but I can also take that too far and start living through it enjoying my life less. I can live with my computer and keep it together in a way that helps me record, plan and enjoy my life more, but I can also get all caught up in it and waste my life on it. I can live with my friends, family, clubs, classes, work, exercise and spirituality all in the same way. Speaking of which, I’m gonna play a game with my little brother…on the computer…right now. : )
