A little OCD - Maybe, but HEY!

I like things to make sense.  I can justify my behavior with all sorts of reasons, but when it comes down to it, I like things to make sense.

My mind is constantly going on a million different ideas, projects, thoughts, plans and when a week like last week hits my brain and causes everything to turn into a brown puddle, I don't like it.

Here's a couple of things that I know about myself.  If I hide items in a cupboard or drawer, I will forget about them and never use them.  Clutter occurs around me because of this.  If I create a space (in a cupboard or a drawer) that I access on a regular basis, this becomes just as accessible as open space to me, so to keep things neat, I work towards this.  I need triggers around so as to remind me what resides in enclosed spaces and I try to create those too.  My memory stinks and it always has.  I try to stay as organized as possible so that I can overcome the fact that my memory just plain stinks.

Adding four classes to my life with each professor demanding different styles of organization and using different methods of presenting information and differing types of technology just about did me in for a few days.  I knew that I had to force this all to come into my style of organization so that I could manage it.  I'd done a little preparation and I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't done that, you would have to simply send in a scoop and pry the puddle off the floor.

Last night as I was finishing up my work for the day, I went back through the world around me, cleaning up scattered papers, gathering pens, pencils, highlighters and other assorted bits and pieces.  I attacked my binders.  I have four classes ... four binders ... four colors.  I had purchased an assorted package of colored cardstock ... (are you seeing where I'm going yet?)  Well, my classwork in the binders needs separators.  Yup, pulled out my stainless steel sharpie, put the orange cardstock in the orange binder, found an orange highlighter and my life for the Inductive Bible Study - Matthew is all done in orange.  I highlighted the assignments due on my calendar in orange, highlighted the pages that needed work in the binder, built the separators for the overwhelming amount of information he gave us and put the binder back.  Did the same for the other three classes and now when I look at my calendar, my little brain is all happy because it can see in a moment what needs to happen over the next several days - the colors remind me which class and the words tell which assignment.

As I quietly put everything back into its place last night, I swore to myself that I wasn't going to tell anyone.  I giggled about it a little and when I woke up this morning, I couldn't wait to pull out my organized life and get to work.  I also knew when I woke up this morning that you were going to hear about this, because I can't keep this stuff a secret, even when I know that I deserve to have you chuckle at me.

Can I tell you that I had already long since built the colors for each class and when my self-published text came in the mail from my Greek professor with an orange cardstock cover on it, I was actually annoyed?  Greek is not orange ... it's purple, for heaven's sake! Oh well, the things I have to suffer through.

Today I will finish up a paper for my Christian Formation class.  Oh, this is a wonderful class ... it's actually giving me a lot of different kinds of information.  Yesterday I was watching lectures on the Trinity, another on the Narrative form in Scripture, I read a wonderful book about the Drama of Scripture and began the paper based on that book.

I will work on my Matthew survey for the Inductive Bible Study course and continue to work through the beginning Greek stuff.  I have enough of this under my belt that I can take a little less time with it which will be given to some other classes.  My New Testament class is discussing a book that I forced myself to read during the month of August.  At least I don't have that heavy reading hanging over my head right now.

There will be a point I run into town for some more office supplies.  I'm weary of punching holes in paper and I know full well that pre-punched paper is available.  Gonna get me some of that!