working it out as I go along

One the nineteenth day of Advent, which was today, I felt very positive in the morning. After my dad had left, I wrote my daily thoughts, and I reflected on how it was a good, positive visit and how I feel energised from it. And then I had an idea. I decided that today I didn’t want to keep track of time. I don’t like time.  I just wanted to do things – all the organisational things I usually do (well, apart from the 40-minute segment thing, because you need time for that) – without looking at the clock. Part of me thought this was a very bad idea, because it is a weakness of mine that I am not very aware of time, and surely I should be encouraging myself to keep track of it, not avoiding it. But then I thought, well, if that is the way my brain works, and if I don’t actually have to keep track of time today, since I have no appointments, why not just have one day where I ignore time.

Then I started thinking about how I would do it. I thought of different things I wanted to do, and then found myself confused because I didn’t know which to do first. So I toyed with the idea of writing down things to do in the order I should do them. My first reaction was that this would never work, because I hate lists and timetables, and they scare me. But then I reasoned this was not the same as a list, because it was in order and I had to stick to the order. And that it was not the same as a timetable, because a timetable has times on it, and that is the main thing I hate about timetables, because I find it too constricting. And I also decided I had nothing to lose by trying this idea.

So. I wrote all the things I wanted to do in the order I wanted to do them. And then I got started. And it worked really well. I didn’t feel overwhelmed, because they were in order, so I had to do one thing at a time, in order. And the lack of time-awareness was so freeing. Thinking about time really distracts me. I got so much done today. I didn’t do everything on my list, but it was a huge long list, and I added extra things along the way that I hadn’t thought of. I went to the sauna and steam room, for instance, as a treat, to relax me, and to make me get out of the house. But even though I didn’t do everything on my list, I still did loads. I vacuumed the whole house. I put away lots of ten things, and threw away lots of ten things. I did yoga, and had a quiet time, and read, as well as doing lots of tidying and cleaning. I like this idea of deciding what to do in order and having no times by them. I will do it again tomorrow, I think. It works. I’ve achieved more today than any other day that I’ve been doing this organisation plan.

On the eighteenth day of Advent, I didn’t find a strategy, but it was an interesting and positive day.

I had ordered an old second-hand book from Amazon called Sidetracked Home Executives. I think someone on bookcrossing recommended it for organising one’s home and life. So I read half of this book on day 18. At first it didn’t look too promising – the authors seemed as different from me as possible. They are two sisters, American, stay-at-home moms, who regularly attend Bible studies and bake thousands of chocolate chip cookies for church. And they merrily decided one day that they were hopeless at tidying their homes so they needed to come up with a plan. But the more I read, I realised there were things that I could relate to – these women easily got distracted and so never stuck to a plan. I realised this is a large part of my difficulty with organisation – I start doing something, but then get distracted by something else, and then something else, and I forget what I was doing. They also describe how they hate lists, and find them scary. These women describe the system they devised, which is a very complicated (or so it seems to me) card index system. They have a set of cards that say things that they must do each day. I could sort of see the benefit of this system, and would probably have finished the book if my dad hadn’t come to visit.

Now, my dad had said he was coming, and I agreed to it, but I had mixed feelings about his visit. This is because often, when my dad comes to visit, he spends the time getting stressed and telling me how messy my house is and how I can’t look after myself and I need to pull myself together, and then he does things, like the washing up (which he doesn’t do properly and I have to rewash everything when he’s done, and he puts things away in the wrong places and he doesn’t stack them properly and sometimes they fall out of the cupboard when I open it and smash on the floor and it scares me) and the ironing (and he does counterproductive things like ironing my crinkle top, and putting everything he’s ironed higgledy-piggledy in a washing basket so they get all crinkly again).  And I tell him not to do these things, and I explain that I don’t like him doing them, but he won’t believe it, and says he needs to do it or it won’t get done, and he insists that I’m grateful really.

So this is why I had mixed feelings about him visiting. But it turned out it was a really good visit. He came in and said he wanted a cup of tea, so I put the kettle on, and then he came and gave me a hug and said well done for the house being so tidy. I explain I was doing several lots of ten things every day, and that’s why it’s tidier. But honestly, I hadn’t realised it was so much tidier. I thought it was still messy and he was going to nag me about it. But he said it is three quarters of the way to being tidy and he was really pleased. He also said that either I was taller or he had shrunk. I said maybe yoga had stretched my back and made me taller. He said that maybe I was just more confident and assertive and so holding myself taller. I wondered if that was the case, and I realised I do feel a hundred times better since starting my year out from college, so I said ‘That is because I am not at college where I was miserable and ill all the time.’

But it made me feel good to realise my organisation stategies are having an effect. I feel more motivated. But then after I’d made my dad a cup of tea, I got a horrible pain in my abdomen. I always get this when he comes to visit. It is from the stress. It was really bad, so I lay on the sofa and cried, and then I told my dad that it was because he was visiting, but that it wasn’t his fault, because I like him, but I just have bad associations with his visits, that make me get abdominal pains, and that I need to now get some good associations instead, so that I stop getting the pains.

When I felt better, my dad drove me to Asda, and I bought lots of things that are big and heavy because it’s better to buy such things when you have a lift than when you are walking. And then we went to a Japanese restaurant and had some lovely food. And then we had a relaxing evening watching TV and chatting. So it was a good day.

(I edited this entry to delete personal stuff about my dad. I tend to write everything in great detail and it is not always appropriate to talk about other people in detail, and not relevant to my Advent organisation plan.).