Five Steps To Banish Chaos & Get Your Life In Order

 

I wrote this post already. I wrote it on Saturday night, and it was a doozy of a post. One of those great posts that just slips from my fingers to paper like water. It was well written, poignant and said everything I wanted to say in just the way I wanted to say it.

Then when I go to copy and paste the text into Typepad this morning so I can publish it as a blog post, the article disappears. Totally gone. It’s not in previous documents. I didn’t save it online. It’s just gone.

Enter frustration and anger.

I kick myself for not making sure to save it carefully. All the other documents I had open when I wrote it are still there. This one Very Important Post? Not there. Who has time to write the same article twice?

The post I wrote was all about forging order and balance in a world that will never be truly under control, and the irony of such doesn't escape me. 

It all started Saturday night as I was catching up on blog reading. I have a section in my Google Reader called Inspirational Blogs. It’s not that they are the blogs from which I draw my greatest inspiration as such, but more a description of a type of blog genre.

Blogs To Help You Find Yourself In 10 Easy Steps

50 Inspirational Sayings To Help Let Go Of Attachment, Find & Open Your Heart Shakras

How To Break Free From Bad Habits & Learn To Rule the World.

It’s not that I don’t find value in posts such as these. Websites like Leo Barbauta’s Zen Habits and Chris Gillebeau’s The Art of Nonconformity are fabulous.  You’ll always find great information to help you reorganize, order and breath through difficult spots.

What frustrates me about them is they give the impression that the writers of those articles are always under control of everything in their lives. From what I read, I’d believe they exercise every day, meditate, do yoga, finish their work, get the best deals on all flights. Their kids never whine. Their meals, always balanced and their inboxes always empty.

Not me. Not even close.

I have four different mailboxes. Couchsurfing. Google for Matador. One I use for The Future Is Red and then another mailbox I use for e-mail subscriptions. Let's also not forget Facebook and Skype. Each is teeming full.

I remember reading on Tim Ferris’ website how the number one rule of keeping order in your e-mail box is never use it as a file cabinet. All of mine are file cabinets.

Me? I have a to do list a mile long and I probably spend more time than I should searching for things I should have put away where they were supposed to go. Only I wasn’t really sure where they were supposed to go because my to do list has so many variables, each item would go in a place of its own, which doesn’t really organize anything. It only forces me to add Organize Files to my to do list.

Perhaps there are many people who are able to find that serene sense of order that  eludes me. I have simply come to the conclusion that I must accept the chaos and learn to exist with it.

Thus, I have developed My Own Personal Rules of Dealing With Chaos & Imperfection.

1. There will always be more to do. 
2. It will all eventually get done.
3. That which doesn’t get done, probably didn’t need to be done in the first place.
4. If I forget something, it won’t matter too much.
5. If it does matter a lot, I will deal with it.

Today, Noah took Lila to school only to find today she has no school which made having our regular Monday morning meeting over Skype with an education consultant in NY difficult. So we set Lila up in our bedroom with a movie – proving exactly how fantastic Mr Fox can actually be. Then the dog starts barking halfway through. Lila sweetly lets him in the house when she comes into the kitchen to pour herself another bowl of cornflakes.

I put him on my lap in an attempt to calm him down. It doesn’t work. Then our internet gets fuzzy.

Meeting ends early because of all the noise and our internet line goes completely down. The dog, somehow miraculously shits on the floor in the five minutes he was in the house even though he was on my lap most of the time. I revive the internet and go to publish my amazing article written Saturday night only to find it has disappeared.

Bottom line, no matter how much I get under control, I will never be able to get my head around everything. There will always be something that goes beyond my capacity.

But it is not the end of the world, and I am not perfect.

And that is fine with me.

P.S. If I ever do find my first, wonderfully perfect article, I'll be sure to post it here.

Photos by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino and Quinn.Anya