soap, Chinatown, SF, Canon Rebel Xti

Everything is floating for me right now. If I was a cartoon drawing you would see all of it spinning over my head: my worries, my finances, my time, what to feed Ben, the last time I exercised…

I try to anchor it all down with lists. Grocery lists, recipes from epicurious, that post Heather did on feeding a picky toddler, journal entries, appointments with the bookkeeper, a better calendar. The lists seem to disappear or be forgotten, the journals close, and I am lost again. I write things down and then forget where I wrote them.

I have always had two recurring dreams when I am overwhelmed. The first is this: I am at the ocean and sitting on the sand. A tsunami-like wave comes, and although I see it in the distance, I can’t outrun it. It overtakes me and snatches away my purse, the one with all the important stuff like my wallet and camera. The last few days I have been having the other variety though. This is the one where I am driving a big car and there are pedestrians going by and I can’t stop, can’t find the brakes, careening out of control.

I have always wished I was one of those super organized folks. You can see it in their uncluttered home, the way they magically seem to remember your birthday each year, and in the way they say, “Oh no, I can’t that day. I have yoga.”

As much as I love the freedom of having a loose schedule and moving organically from one thing to the next, I realize over and over that structure actually supports me more in doing what I want to do. In the spirit of this, I am working with an awesome woman who is helping me to organize my business from the ground up and create systems so that things run more efficiently. Hallelujah! Being someone who has never balanced her checkbook (insert horrified looks) this is a welcome stretch for me.

I am looking forward to feeling more at ease in my life and business. Knowledge is power, right? Especially around money, I think we sometimes think that if we hide from our numbers they won’t stress us out. Now I wonder if the opposite is true.

Do you have any tips for being organized in your home or business? How the heck do you people do it?