A Year Mindful

The Life Organizer.

If I could have sound effects in my post you would have heard that in a deep, ominous, echoing voice that would strike fear in your heart … especially in the heart of a creative person. Now, I am only basing my opinion on myself and the creative people that I know but it just seems that trying to get organized is an infeasible goal for the creative mind.

In fact, goal? Oh my goodness … I have tried to make goals, break them down into doable tasks, track my progress. Just can’t do it. Life just seems to get in the way. Then I spend my time swaying from feeling guilty because I can’t stay on task or feeling resentful that my life has interrupted my to-do list.

People who visit my house think that I am an organized person because, well, I don’t know why. I guess because they expect with ten people in our home that it would be utter chaos. No, it’s just managed chaos, but chaos still the same. There are semblances of routines and systems that keep our heads above the water and most of the time I can find the things I am looking for and we are usually on time for appointments. Reasonable organization, I guess. I have found that organizing them (them meaning THOSE PEOPLE who live in my house) seems to take all I have which leaves not much left for me to keep myself moving forward.

I have spent countless hours and too many dollars trying to be an effective manager of my time and my home. I have spent too many tears feeling like a failure when the new and improved plan didn’t work. Despair can easily set in when there is a mountain of laundry, a molehill of dishes and a lump in the bed that is me because all I really want to do is have some fun.

Enter: The Life Organizer (did you hear the voice?)

Oh, I might wish that The Life Organizer were a magic fairy who would come and make my home neat and orderly in the wee hours of the night. She would be my personal manager making those tiny decisions that eat up my brain power throughout the day, leaving me free to paint, write, be the creative person that I am. Maybe she could even make me aware of what it is I want in the first place.

The Life Organizer is not that but it is something I have been using for a awhile now and it helping me corral my creative energy and be organized like only I can be. The problem before was that I tried to force myself into someone else’s model of being organized, of time management. I realize now that most systems that I found were to linear, required me to operate completely counter to who I am in order to work … therefore they usually didn’t work.

But one day, while listening to Creative Mom Podcast in April, I heard Amy talk about The Life Organizer: A Woman’s Guide to a Mindful Year by Jennifer Louden. I was mesmerized, tantalized by the thought of a mindful year. Being aware had become a bit of theme for me and this just seemed to fit in so nicely with that thought process. However, sometimes, I think we have not served ourselves well when we label things in time constraints and then our normal way of counting time can get in the way of making changes now … instead of waiting until the beginning of the week or month or year. I had decided I would purchase the book for my “beginning again” New Year present. Why would I do that to myself? So many unkept resolutions each January, just too much pressure. Why would I wait that long?

Thankfully, my better judgment won out and I bought the book, mid-year and began to soak in the most incredible, relevant wisdom.

She caught me with the first paragraph:

What if there was a way to organize and guide your life that more closely resembled lying back on an inner tube as the current carried you along (with you occasionally adjusting your course because you want to smell a wild rose on shore or because you hit a bumpy stretch) rather than a furious, exhausting upstream paddle? What if self-mercy and listening to your authentic desires were your truest guides, far more trustworthy than gauging how much you accomplish in a day or what you earn? What if feeling confusion and uncertainty was actually a sign that you were on the right path? What if you could erase your sense of never having enough time or energy by cultivating a constant loving connection to yourself?

She goes on to talk about how setting a goal, breaking down into smaller steps and staying on task is only part of the the story and that …

“we’re starving for the rest, for a heart-based, spiritually informed, trusting story. We want to make room for, even to embrace, chaos and interruption and accept that there are many times in our lives when we don’t know the big picture and we can only discern what to do one step at a time … We find that the most direct means to create a life that fits us is to embrace each moment as it arises.”

Yes! Finally permission to listen to myself, to quit fighting against the natural thing that is my life, to honor who I am, how I am and what I am. What I feel like this book has given me is freedom to find the way that works for me by being mindful, aware of each moment … each chaotic moment.

The Life Organizer was actually the catalyst for starting a new blog. I felt like my life had been moving along without me, the journey was the focus, definitely rushing along furiously paddling to keep up. I am ready to breathe, to focus on this present moment, and live deeply … letting that be my guide. There will be more posts, I am sure, as I share what I am learning through this process. For now … this moment calls for more coffee and a wakening of the slumbering teen who is making breakfast this morning.

Mindfully living . . .

Related Tags: Life Organizer, Jennifer Louden, Creative Mom Podcast

~ by Cynthia on August 29, 2007.