I would generally consider myself to be a fairly organized person, however what I’m about to write will make that seem rather hard to believe. If anything, being organized and on time is something I would consider a skill, but again, it will not seem like that soon.
When I say I’m organized, what I really mean is I can coordinate the shit out of things. I rarely, if ever, hand in a project late. In university, I would start my assignments early and be done weeks before they were due (obnoxious, I know), and I have organized more than one large event for the community, all without catastrophic failure.
I am good at it. I like lists.
The problem is that while I like lists, without out those lists, my life would fall into a scorched hell-scape where kids were regularly forgotten at afterschool activities, appointments would never be made, and house plants would consider themselves lucky to be watered every 2-7 months.
Without my assortment of productivity apps offering up reminders, calendars, and alarms prompting me to look at those same reminders and calendars, I would have to seriously consider hiring an assistant who’s sole purpose would be to follow me around and tell me what I’d forgotten. Which would be almost everything.
I have the memory of a problematic gold fish. I am not good at remembering anything: Names, faces, dates, words mid-sentence, book titles, directions that I just asked for (despite nodding yes as the directions are given, and truly believing this time will be different)….you name it, I can forget it. Immediately. Sometimes things will come back to me at random and inappropriate times, and sometimes things are lost forever in the dark recesses of my mind. Although confusingly, I can remember both of my parents old license plates (not mine of course) and my high school locker combo (also not useful)….cool.
I do have some mechanisms that I’ve adapted over time to help me survive when reminder apps aren’t suitable to the situation. I’m pretty good at charades, acting out what I’m trying to say when words escape me, or giving a series of random clues to help the person guess at what I mean. My husband is particularly good at this game, so when I say it’s the guy who looks like the Walmart version of the other guy from the movie we watched last night, he will know I mean Derek. This is why our marriage works. He doesn’t even seemed phased anymore, just rolls with it and plays along.
All of this makes me sound scattered and very UNorganized, but I promise, between lists, charades, and my real-life games of Guess Who, I do ok.
Except for last week, when I did not do ok. And I did not do ok in a very new, and very special way.
For the first time in the 17 years of my adult-life employment run, I went to work when I didn’t have to. I was not on the schedule, I was not called in unexpectedly, I just got up, got ready, went in and started slogging through my daily shit.
And NO ONE MENTIONED ANYTHING. Not one person looked at me quizzically, or wondered out loud why I was in the office. They all just let it happen. I didn’t realize my mistake until 12:15. I had been working through part of my lunch so I could leave a little early that day, and just happened to check my calendar to see what time my meeting started. Turns out, I could have left any fucking time I wanted. It still hurts me to think about.
So in the end I stayed because I was already there and the damage had been done, but I am not sure I could have been considered productive. It’s one thing to forget a grocery list item, it’s another thing entirely to know that my brain comprehensively failed to recognize what day it was. It threw off my vibe for the rest of the week.
So in closing, and because I’d still like to believe that I can function in mainstream society, I’m going to have to adopt a Santa Clause approach from now on; make that list, and check it at least twice to try an avoid such a fantastically stupid cock up in the future.
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