Organize your life in 520 easy steps

As long as we're being completely honest here, I'm a rotten personal planner. I like to imagine a life lived with the decent organization that precludes the popping-up of fires that Must be Dealt with Now lest they grow to forest-size and devastate my humble abode: A long-term retirement plan, a system where my tax info is filed neatly away by year, a typed list of my staple groceries on the refrigerator - with a check-mark next to the items that need replenishing--(This suggestion I actually found in last month's issue of Real Simple-the Ultimate Organized and Stress-Free Women magazine that's become my dirty secret, my source of desire and loathing: the latter emotion directed alternately at the magazine for its prissy claim that Total Control is just a closet-organizer away, and yes, at myself for failing, again and again, to be even a quarter as well thought-out and fancy-free as the neutral-toned-clothing-clad, blemish-free women who grace its pages.)


At work, or at freelance jobs, I'm good at organization; a tad obsessed, because it Really reflects on me in an obvious way if I'm not. The work I'm doing there is never just for me, and I hate letting others down. Ask me where a hard copy of this or that spreadsheet is, and I'll have it for you in seconds. My desk at home, meanwhile--here--is a friggin' mess, and I feel actual shame over this, because it symbolizes the way that my actual own personal goals are in kind of a shambles.

Boring paragraph:
What it looks like: My desk is housed in a closet sans door in our spare room. The hanger-bar is strung with western-themed Christmas lights and multi-colored miniature paper fans hang from the bottom of the highest shelf. A painting my friend made for my birthday last year hangs on the wall, along with postcards and photos and drawings my nieces have made. On the shelf right above my desk, there's collection of small Virgin Mary statues that belonged to my deceased grandmother. More framed photos. And there, the impressively-personalized details morph into Just Plain Mess. Beside the Mary statues: binders, notebooks, folders, burned cds of audio stories I've put together, all leaning onto one-another and overhanging the shelf itself. Next to those, a box of envelopes, all warped from moisture and being shoved over by the pile of falling binders. There's a clay pot I painted at one of them Only-$25-bucks-an-hour--oh-boy!-Paint-it-yerself places, filled with pens, markers, sunglasses, let's see--a glue stick, an old undeveloped roll of film, spare change, lip-balm and a keychain. Next to that: A box of minidiscs, a matchbox car, a pile of printer paper topped with various cords and a blank-cd tower. And, for the grande finale, the desk itself: God. No. Well, unless you're a pantheist, in which case, yes. Everywhere. Um, papers. Bills. Cds. Scissors. Car repair bills. More random cords to things that I use sometimes. My printer. Speakers. This book from my Dad: 97 Ways to Make a Dog Smile. Embroidery materials. Unopened bank statements. A computer keyboard to connect to this laptop because laptop keyboards are so irritating and small. That I got for Christmas. Still in its box.


Better paragraph/end to rant
If you've actually read this far, wow--and, I apologize. Here is the fear: When I was little, I was a Brownie and had a meeting every Thursday afternoon after school - after which, my mother was supposed to pick me up.
My older sisters and I have discussed this: It's a phenomenon we have in common; it links the multitude of years that separates our disparate childhoods. All of us recall afternoons of sitting on the wall outside school a half hour after the Scout meeting ended, troop leader in her station wagon or van, waiting for my mom to show up.


My mother was not a neglectful person, or really forgetful in other ways; but I've come to associate her brain-block about picking us up after Girl Scouts with some dreaded Curse of Disorganization that perhaps I will never shake. Never will I get what I want out of life because the want ad for All-Expenses-Paid Travel Writer to New Zealand position is wadded up, unnoticed somehow, beneath my month-old energy bills and car registration papers.