Abigail M. Schilling

I'm a very organized person. A lot of this has to do with the planner and the sheer amount of lists I make to keep track of things. Being an organized person doesn't necessarily mean always being organized.

For example, right now there are 8 pairs of jeans on the floor in my bedroom. I know there are eight because I counted as I tried them on and then took them off. In the middle of the night before we left for The Yos last week. Did I know I had exactly eight pairs before that moment? Not really. I knew there were jeans marked in the "jeans" box in my closet. I knew that they were jeans that either didn't fit anymore or had holes or weren't cool enough.

Sometimes they were all of the above. Now they will stay on my floor until I decide to decide on what to do with them. Do I wish they weren't there? Sure. Do I wish my floor was clean all the time and everything was always put away? Sure. Is it usually the way I wish it were? Nope.

I'm not sure if I just proved anything about being an organized person vs. being organized.

When I got to work yesterday I felt really disoriented. This is partially because my office actually moved while I was on vacation and now I have three times as much space as I used to and how exactly is the best way to use all this space? and also because I haven't really slept at all for about a week and partially because gearing down from a trip takes me days and I just got back.

So I sat at my very large, three-times-bigger desk and turned on my computer. And there were a ton of emails and I couldn't really think clearly because I had cleared my mind of work the whole time I was on vacation, so what is this person talking about? My brain is full of things like remember to put all the food away in the bear lockers and making fun of Heather for bringing such a big bag.

This might have happened last week before I left. Except the other way around. I was working a ton getting ready to go on vacation and I kept getting these emails about camping gear and I was like what the hell is a tent? Is that like the singular of tense? Like how I feel right now? Shifting gears is something I have to consciously decide to do.

And other things tend to fall by the wayside when I'm trying to figure out how to switch gears. For example, I didn't really have a lot of time to eat or think about eating while I was at work trying to shift gears. So I ate fun size Milky Ways, Ice Breaker mints, and cheesecake. That's not real food. It didn't make me less hungry or less tired. In fact, it only made my tummy hurt.

Which is why I was really happy when I finally opened my planner and found this list edited by Heather and Matt.