This week I’ve been working on making my books available more directly through other vendors besides Amazon. As I began pulling files of the covers and the interiors, it hit me that my organization skills are highly lacking.
I consider myself to be a relatively organized person. I juggle a full-time job, running a publishing business, running my writing business, a family that includes three kids and multiple animals, and my limited self-care. I think I do it fairly well with only the occasional meltdown. However, it’s days like this that I realize it’s all a façade, a house of cards teetering as another card is placed. I manage, like many of us do, to keep the house steady but one misstep and it’s bound to come tumbling down. It’s times like this – when I need to find a specific file, when my taxes are due, when I need medical records or insurance information – that I feel it wobbling.
So where does that leave me? I’m able to admit the problem, to see that my junk drawers are overflowing, that the Legos are peeking out from under furniture, that the junk mail is stacked neatly in a bin where it will stay for the next six months. But admitting it doesn’t help to stabilize the house of cards and avert the impending disastrous collapse.
I don’t have an honest solution except to say that it takes time – time I constantly say I don’t have, but time I need to set aside. Time better spent tackling the clutter or disorganized filing systems than spent gazing awestruck at the organization shows on HGTV or Netflix. Time that I might snag by turning off the fascinating Tik-Tok videos of people with immaculate refrigerators or pantries. I’ll never have that level of perfection, life simply doesn’t allow for it…at least my life doesn’t. But I do think I’ll make a plan to lower my disorganization stress with baby steps over the next few months. And perhaps, by January, I’ll find those files I was looking for!
