Organization or Obsession?

I am a self-described organized person but some of that as I define as organized can feel obsessive. I drive myself crazy with rules that I create for myself about how to live my life and disguise those as “organization”. Don’t get me wrong organization is key to a successful life. Everything has to have its place and time and that which is in its place and has its time must have importance and intention. The point at which it feels obsessive is when its rigidity feels like failure or false success because the rule was followed regardless of the importance or intention.

I am and forever will be obsessed with my health, which is actually my weight but I call it health because it sounds better and it is. You ask, “Do you actually organize your health?”…well yes of course because it satisfies the definition of being important and intended. I schedule every single hour of my day to include what time I am going to wake-up and go to bed so that I am sure to get 8-hours of sleep. I schedule my workouts, what time I will leave for work, what time I will leave for home, eat dinner, read…well you get the idea…obsessed or organized? Regardless of the answer it is my health; physical and mental and it matters so I do it.

I am a a strong-believer that if you don’t schedule it, it won’t get done. But what this scheduling replaces is the reality that life will get in the way and worse, doing what feels right regardless of the “schedule”. If you wake and don’t feel like working out, do you do it anyway? And when you have to deviate from that schedule is it a “fail”? Another example of this that also pertains to “health” is logging my diet. I have been logging my foods for a billion years. While this is considered a healthy practice and meal-planning is key to health; at what point do I eat because I already weighed out a 4-oz portion and logged it versus eating until I feel satisfied? In these cases I find myself listening to my organization more than myself. Organized or obsessed? or discipline? (oh wait…that is an entirely different blog 🙂

I might go as far as to say that I am obsessed with organization. I like everything to be just “so” at work and at home. My husband reminds me that we do not live in a museum. I understand that but nonetheless I like a tidy home and I like everything to be of use and have a home. I Spring Clean my home numerous times a year because I like to purge what is not being used to allow more space; not to be mistaken as room for something else, just space. At work you would be hard-pressed to find my office as I have not one picture nor object that would identify it as mine. I need a clean, minimalist space to do my best work; free from clutter like my mind.

I am a planner and spend the first weekend of every month, setting my intentions for the month and following up on those from the previous month to see what I accomplished. This is where success and failure are abound. Instead of patting myself on the back for all of the things I did accomplish I focus on those that I did not, and then set a new plan to accomplish those the next month. There is a little Stephen Covey discipline in there about moving things forward that don’t get done to keep the “To Do” list current but…taking time to celebrate the successes needs to be part of “the list”.

When I think back to when all of this started I remember always making my bed from the time I could recall having my own bed. I would clean the house without my mother ever asking and even recall offering to mop the floors around the age of 8 if she would buy me one of those new fancy roller mops. Growing up in school, I always kept a running list for my homework and found great pride in my neat papers; no dogeared corners, no spiral rip-offs dangling and God forbid if you could see when something had been erased, I would rewrite the entire paper. Definitely obsessed and organized to a fault!

Regardless of what you call it, I am obsessed with being organized and I own it. I make myself crazy admittedly and while I will swear off logging the same damn foods I log everyday and being wildly surprised when it still calculates to the same total…I know that in a moment of weakness on the scale I will find “MyFitnessPal” once again! Living my life obsessed, organized and owning it – L.