Issues that I’m dealing with lately – the two big ones are motivation and organization. Let’s be honest, I’ve been struggling with organization all of my life. OK, perhaps not all – I’m sure I wasn’t even the least bit concerned with it at 2 years of age, but when I was 6 a nun started yanking on my hair because of the state of my desk – she wasn’t even my teacher! (I didn’t even make it ¾ of first grade at the Catholic school)

My psychologist seems to think that organization can wait, motivation is more important. I suppose, in some ways, it is; if I’m not motivated to organize my life, how will I ever manage it? Still, I feel like my lack of organization gets in the way of my motivation. Every time I start to do one thing, I notice that there’s something else that’s also rather important, which needs to be done as well. I should probably make a note and stick to what I’m already working on, until it’s finished, but I feel like I must give attention to this other thing that needs doing. I think I convince myself that it won’t take long, but that’s not always true. Plus, I don’t always get back to the original thing I was doing.

The worst is when this gets strung out – I’m working on one project, and I remember something very pressing that needs to be done, so I try to take care of that first. Then I realize that I’ve completely forgotten about something altogether different. I waste time trying to decide whether I should stick to what I’m doing or try and take care of this newly realized issue, and usually end up moving on to the new issue. And so on, and so forth.

The result – I start a lot of things and get very few of them done. I guess that’s a pretty strong sign of disorganization. Not surprised. I really need to work on this. Part of the problem, I think, is that there are obligations attached to some of the things I do. It’s not that hard for me to ignore Facebook, or check it for a moment and then get back to what I’m doing. I have no real obligation to anyone to use FB.

But I do have obligations in other areas. I get some of the bigger ones covered – appointments and such, but even in that area I manage to screw up. And once I get off track, it’s tough to get back on.

We had a June storm knock out our power for about 5 days and tear up the property as well, and that really knocked me down a peg or two, in a few areas.

Anyway, I’m going to have to figure this out and make it work. This issue with the organization and motivation, it’s like the chicken and the egg: Which came first/Which to work on first? Is it even possible to make one work without the other?

I haven’t really discussed motivation and the details of that problem, yet. I’ll make that next week’s article. The plan with this blog, for the moment, is to post weekly, and increase the frequency as I go along. To punctuate the problem I have with organization – I was originally working on another project, when I realized that I still haven’t gotten a blog post done this week. So far, I can at least say, that since I started writing this article, I haven’t given it up for another project. Yet.

You know, just from reading what I’ve written here, and trying to decide on a title, I’ve come to realize that there is yet a third problem that conspires with my two main problems – priorities. More on that later.