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Mar. 31st, 2005 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogHow do you all deal with losing things like a wallet or your car keys? This is of great concern to me because I do that sort of thing frequently and it is causing me problems. Or rather, it isn't causing me a huge problem, and that is largely the problem. Let me explain...
Do you ever put something down and find that you can't remember where you put it? Do you, while sitting stationary in a chair, set something down and then find that it has become completely lost in some sort of cosmic void? I honestly don't know how often this happens to most people; for me, this is a daily, sometimes even hourly, occurrence.
I am continually misplacing my posessions. I lost track of everything from my wallet, my keys, my ID badge for work, and my cell-phone to things like the clothes I was wearing yesterday (or am supposed to wear tomorrow) or (relatively) large computer parts. One of my favorite examples: I was ripping plywood on a table saw at the theatre I used to work at. I cut a piece of it off and took it over to another area. I walked back and couldn't find the remainder. I'd lost a 4 foot by 4 foot chunk of plywood. It took me five minutes of searching to figure out where I'd set it down.
That reminds me too of the time I was looking all over for a ratchet I was using in the grid up above the stage. A friend told me it was in my hand. That sort of thing happens to everybody, right? In my case though, I didn't believe him. He had to convince me to look in my hand and see that it was right there. I'm just not good at keeping track of objects.
I forget tasks too, I'm told. Andrea tells me that she often asks me to do things that I do not do. Now, I don't recall this happening, but I suppose I wouldn't, would I?
Andrea says that this scares her. I feel bad about that, and maybe I shouldn't be surprised by it. I guess it is fairly out of the ordinary. It really doesn't scare me, but maybe that's just because I'm used to it. I mean, I've been this way all my life for as long as I can remember. It hasn't gotten any better, but then it hasn't gotten any worse either, so I just look at it as something I need to learn to live with. Just part of all the other neurological issues I have to deal with.
I said this doesn't scare me and that's true. It's also true that this does not make me upset or furstrated except on rare occasions, and that's something else that Andrea has trouble dealing with. She feels like I'm being irresponsible and uncaring. I can understand that perspective, and I can certainly understand being frustrated about things like this happening. I used to be the king of the lost item temper tantrums when I was a school-aged boy.
When I would do something typically Chris-like such as spending fifteen minutes looking for something I lost without getting up from my chair or coming downstairs for the third time in a row without the item I went upstairs for because seeing something else interesting up there had completely knocked it from my mind, I got seriously pissed! I yelled and shouted about how angry I was and how I couldn't figure out how this kept happening to me and how someone must be moving my things around when I'm not looking and how this was not my fault!
Finally, one day, I stopped being letting myself be furious over these things. I realized that stomping around my room and shouting while overturning piles of detritus to attempt to find lost item number 2468 was really being unfair to those around me. Not only that, but it really wasn't getting me anywhere. I got upset, my family got upset, and the item was still missing. I began to figure out how to deal with misplacing my things without blowing up over it. How was that? By accepting the situation, and by accepting myself.
See, I'd noticed a pattern; I lose item, get terribly upset, make a mess in a futile search for the item, collapse somwhere to calm down, and then, finally, find it later when doing something completely unrelated. I thought, 'I'f I'm not going to find it 'till later anyway, why not skip all the middle steps and leave everyone involved in a much better mood?'
And it worked. No more temper tantrums or broken things, no more people getting (rightfully) upset with me. If there was something I really needed immediately, I would search for it, going methodically through all my belongings and getting quite grumpy in the process, and actually finding the thing perhaps fifty percent of the time. But most of the time I would just relax and let the item find itself: ninety-nine percent of the time or more, it did. And I was content; I'd found what worked for me. I managed to muddle on that way for a good long time. It's not that I was unconcerned about the missing items; I was actually very concerned. I'd just accepted what seemed to me to be the best way to find them; after giving it a decent effort, stop looking.
Maybe there are things that this doesn't work for though. Maybe I should be more concerned when I lose something like my wallet. I think what I've learned about not getting upset is valuable and applicable, but maybe just waiting for it to turn up is a bad idea. Maybe I need to search more thoroughly. It's just tough to get the idea that such searches are futile out of my head; I honestly feel like they are most times. I used to try so hard to find things and just frustrate myself...
I lose things a lot more often than most people do. I accept that as something I have to deal with and that I could be dealing with better. I welcome suggestions on that. I have plans for dealing with things in the new house. I'm going to hang a basket near the back door for my things to go in. I'm not going to let myself go into the house withough placing keys, wallet, any work ID I may have, and similar things inside it. I need to train myself to be much more methodical and consistent about cleaning things up and keeping them clean. I need to stay organized. It's really tough to do that in the apartment as it is now simply because I've allowed my stuff to get so disordered that it's hard to keep up, and I feel like, with the move coming up soon, it's kind of silly to start now. But the new place will be different.
But I know that I'm still going to keep losing things in the future. I've recognized and accepted that it's unavoidable. I guess I need to find a balance between head-exploding frustration and laid-back waiting for my things to come back to me. As much as I say that the number one thing life has taught me is that the truth is always in the middle, balances like that are something I'm not so great at. For as open as I am to strange and new possibilites, I can be very black and white at times. I just know that I want to stop upsetting Andrea so much.
If anyone has any comments, ideas, or resources for the terminally disorganized and/or forgetful, I would appreciate your input.
Do you ever put something down and find that you can't remember where you put it? Do you, while sitting stationary in a chair, set something down and then find that it has become completely lost in some sort of cosmic void? I honestly don't know how often this happens to most people; for me, this is a daily, sometimes even hourly, occurrence.
I am continually misplacing my posessions. I lost track of everything from my wallet, my keys, my ID badge for work, and my cell-phone to things like the clothes I was wearing yesterday (or am supposed to wear tomorrow) or (relatively) large computer parts. One of my favorite examples: I was ripping plywood on a table saw at the theatre I used to work at. I cut a piece of it off and took it over to another area. I walked back and couldn't find the remainder. I'd lost a 4 foot by 4 foot chunk of plywood. It took me five minutes of searching to figure out where I'd set it down.
That reminds me too of the time I was looking all over for a ratchet I was using in the grid up above the stage. A friend told me it was in my hand. That sort of thing happens to everybody, right? In my case though, I didn't believe him. He had to convince me to look in my hand and see that it was right there. I'm just not good at keeping track of objects.
I forget tasks too, I'm told. Andrea tells me that she often asks me to do things that I do not do. Now, I don't recall this happening, but I suppose I wouldn't, would I?
Andrea says that this scares her. I feel bad about that, and maybe I shouldn't be surprised by it. I guess it is fairly out of the ordinary. It really doesn't scare me, but maybe that's just because I'm used to it. I mean, I've been this way all my life for as long as I can remember. It hasn't gotten any better, but then it hasn't gotten any worse either, so I just look at it as something I need to learn to live with. Just part of all the other neurological issues I have to deal with.
I said this doesn't scare me and that's true. It's also true that this does not make me upset or furstrated except on rare occasions, and that's something else that Andrea has trouble dealing with. She feels like I'm being irresponsible and uncaring. I can understand that perspective, and I can certainly understand being frustrated about things like this happening. I used to be the king of the lost item temper tantrums when I was a school-aged boy.
When I would do something typically Chris-like such as spending fifteen minutes looking for something I lost without getting up from my chair or coming downstairs for the third time in a row without the item I went upstairs for because seeing something else interesting up there had completely knocked it from my mind, I got seriously pissed! I yelled and shouted about how angry I was and how I couldn't figure out how this kept happening to me and how someone must be moving my things around when I'm not looking and how this was not my fault!
Finally, one day, I stopped being letting myself be furious over these things. I realized that stomping around my room and shouting while overturning piles of detritus to attempt to find lost item number 2468 was really being unfair to those around me. Not only that, but it really wasn't getting me anywhere. I got upset, my family got upset, and the item was still missing. I began to figure out how to deal with misplacing my things without blowing up over it. How was that? By accepting the situation, and by accepting myself.
See, I'd noticed a pattern; I lose item, get terribly upset, make a mess in a futile search for the item, collapse somwhere to calm down, and then, finally, find it later when doing something completely unrelated. I thought, 'I'f I'm not going to find it 'till later anyway, why not skip all the middle steps and leave everyone involved in a much better mood?'
And it worked. No more temper tantrums or broken things, no more people getting (rightfully) upset with me. If there was something I really needed immediately, I would search for it, going methodically through all my belongings and getting quite grumpy in the process, and actually finding the thing perhaps fifty percent of the time. But most of the time I would just relax and let the item find itself: ninety-nine percent of the time or more, it did. And I was content; I'd found what worked for me. I managed to muddle on that way for a good long time. It's not that I was unconcerned about the missing items; I was actually very concerned. I'd just accepted what seemed to me to be the best way to find them; after giving it a decent effort, stop looking.
Maybe there are things that this doesn't work for though. Maybe I should be more concerned when I lose something like my wallet. I think what I've learned about not getting upset is valuable and applicable, but maybe just waiting for it to turn up is a bad idea. Maybe I need to search more thoroughly. It's just tough to get the idea that such searches are futile out of my head; I honestly feel like they are most times. I used to try so hard to find things and just frustrate myself...
I lose things a lot more often than most people do. I accept that as something I have to deal with and that I could be dealing with better. I welcome suggestions on that. I have plans for dealing with things in the new house. I'm going to hang a basket near the back door for my things to go in. I'm not going to let myself go into the house withough placing keys, wallet, any work ID I may have, and similar things inside it. I need to train myself to be much more methodical and consistent about cleaning things up and keeping them clean. I need to stay organized. It's really tough to do that in the apartment as it is now simply because I've allowed my stuff to get so disordered that it's hard to keep up, and I feel like, with the move coming up soon, it's kind of silly to start now. But the new place will be different.
But I know that I'm still going to keep losing things in the future. I've recognized and accepted that it's unavoidable. I guess I need to find a balance between head-exploding frustration and laid-back waiting for my things to come back to me. As much as I say that the number one thing life has taught me is that the truth is always in the middle, balances like that are something I'm not so great at. For as open as I am to strange and new possibilites, I can be very black and white at times. I just know that I want to stop upsetting Andrea so much.
If anyone has any comments, ideas, or resources for the terminally disorganized and/or forgetful, I would appreciate your input.
