There's Something About Harry

Over the years I have moved from completely unorganized to completely organized and back again many times.  Typically, I make a decision to change and become more or less organized depending on where I am in my life and what I’m doing.

I tend to find that if I am too organized in an anal going to plan when to plan where to put your socks away, then my creativity suffers.

If I’m too unorganized then too much chaos prevents me from getting enough work done at all.

By the way, I realize this topic on the surface may seem rather mundane compared to my recent writing performing a lobotomy on my feelings trying to analyze my emotions and figure out what is going on with my relationship with my wife, but this actually relates a bit.

My wife and I are typically always the opposite of each other.  When I’m organized, she is not and vice versa.  This axiom pretty much holds true for everything about us.  Usually it keeps our relationship in balance in an opposites attract kind of way.

Over the recent few months, things have gotten even less organized for me than normal, and Becky has swung back from Uber Organized towards less organized after she started relaxing a bit after ‘completing’ her National Boards last spring. (Unfortunately, she has to redo part of her boards this spring, so her relaxation break is about over).

My work schedule has also focused on working nights mostly, since I work from home and need peace and quiet for a good deal of the work I do when I’m in a large project.  That night time work puts a little distance between Becky and I even though it gives me more time to spend with the kids.

So since the whole craziness surrounding the discovery that my wife had gotten extra-friendly with another guy, I’ve been looking at what I can do to change/improve myself, how we can repair/strengthen our relationship and a number of other things.

One of the things that I started working on (was already working on but now have a new focus and re-emphasis on importance) is getting more organized myself.

I’m in the midst of setting up 1 possibly 2 new offices, one in Charlotte for sure and I’m tentatively looking at setting one up in Savannah as well.  If I’m going to manage multiple work locations (home, Charlotte and Savannah) I need to be more organized.  If my wife and I are not going to be two ships passing in the night, we also have to be organized enough to know where we each are, when the other needs help or support, who has the kids on whichever event is happening on any given day or evening and a bunch of other stuff.

This weekend Becky and I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out what we were going to be doing over the next month both in regards to work, the kids, business and personal travel, Christmas, parties, etc.

We organized it all through Google calendar, which updates both of our phones and is accessible via our computers.

That’s just an example, but we’ve actually been doing a number of things like that to get more organized, not just individually but together.  If we are going to be attracted opposites, we have to be a little synced up.

Planning my Future While in the Military

Years ago when I was in the Army, I had a lot of time on my hands.  Especially time where my mind was unoccupied, even though I might be humping a GP medium around on my back (probably couldn’t do that these days, but I could then).

It gave me a lot of time to plan in my head what I was going to do with my future.  Back then I had not been to college yet, and getting there was one of my primary goals.

I wasn’t as concerned with a number of the details of college, like what I would study nor which school I would go to.  I was focused on making it happen, getting there, and getting the most out of it while I was there. 

Back then, I didn’t have the wisdom to understand the importance of school and path of study as much, partly because I was a blank slate and I was talented and smart enough to do something useful with anything I learned.  I could do a lot of something with about anything.

Planning My Future While I Read Audio Books

Years later, I found myself planning my future again.  I was in college finally, and approaching the end of my first degrees.  I was also working full time for the USPS and running a business on the side.  I was kind of a busy guy.  Shortly after, Becky was pregnant with Corbin and life got more interesting.

During that time, not to mention my 52 mile round trip commute from home to school to work to home each day, I had a lot of time to think and plan.

I read hundreds of audio books back then.  When I had been in high school and the military I read hundreds of books and more too.  The reading gave me the perspective to think things through in my head and the material and resources to bounce possibilities around and weigh the good, the bad, the ugly and come up with a vision.

I would create short term action plans, but would not chart out the long term plan.  That was always more of a vision that I strode towards.

Back in late 2005 – 2006, I had an epiphany around the concept of new media, sometimes called social media these days, and something that will be called something completely different in 2 years, but will probably still have the world media some where near it.

I’ve been planning since that epiphany and gaining some experience around the concepts I’m working on the whole time.  But the last 8 months hasn’t really spared me enough time to plan the vision of how to get there.  That’s partly because more and more my work has become more focused on creating things and to push my creativity things became less organized to the point where I didn’t have as much time to plan and envision the future as I would like.

So that also is one of the reasons why I needed a bit of a change and a reset.  I even think this time around, I might try and perform my planning or ‘envisioning’ through my writing or maybe through audio or video, which might be more appropriate for rapid thinking.