Organization

It's a tough day when my major accomplishment is to turn the page of the calendar. I spent the morning at the forum on the County budget yesterday. I learned a lot about the budget but the forum stopped painfully short of providing an opportunity for meaningful input.

So, I needed the afternoon to set things in order for the coming week. This year I bought one of those terrific blotter calendars so I'd always have an easy place to write stuff down, to encourage me to keep the top of my desk clear and to reduce the need to wipe coffee spills off the desk. It functions great for objectives 1 and 3. But keeping the surface of the desk is still a disaster. Good grief, I'm a procrastinator. And I'm a serious victim of, "Out of sight, out of mind." My idea of prioritizing is to keep the important stuff on the top of the pile. Or start a new pile.

Co-worker: Can I put this here, Cathy?

Cathy: No! That's the doomed pile.

Cathy: New mail goes in this little pile that I can still deal with...One-week-old mail goes in this little pile.

Cathy: The doomed pile is for things I've avoided, ignored, rationalized and hidden from for so long that I can't even look at them without getting sick.

Co-worker: If you're never going to do that stuff, why don't you just throw it away?

Cathy: It would seem so unprofessional.

So, despite getting sidetracked sorting the coins in my purse (I found several keepers, including a 1944 wheat ear penny - and I had just read that it's estimated that 99.9% of all wheaties have been pulled out of circulation - can't think why I have 1.02 Euros), I now have the March calendar page to write on and only one (well, really two) tiny piles of stuff and three dirty dishes on the desk. And it's only March 4!