04.01.08
Paper panic
I couldn’t find two very important pieces of paper yesterday and such a feeling of panic arose in me. I’ve been working very hard to file papers as soon as I got them, not touch them more than once, and not stack them in piles. I’ve really grown to like the clean desktop concept and the feeling of calm that comes with it. Then when I couldn’t find these two pieces of paper, my first thought was, “Eeeek, I’ve thrown them away by mistake! How could I have done that? It was such a bad idea to get organized. I knew where everything was when it was in piles.”
I frantically searched what remained of my piles and files: my nearly empty in-box, a pile of stuff left over from the big purge awhile back, and a folder marked “DO.” I found some interesting stuff I’d forgotten about squirreled away in those places, like those darned appraisals I was going to do a few weeks ago. But I didn’t find the papers I was looking for.
In a fit of desperation, I checked the green conference bag I bring to work every day, sure I wouldn’t find them in there. Why would I take them home with me?, I asked myself. They were part of a larger group of papers, so I wouldn’t need them by themselves.
Surprise! That’s where they were. I was relieved I found them, frustrated I couldn’t find them, and aggravated that I forgot where I put them. Some days I feel like I wake up and have totally forgotten everything that happened in my life up until that morning.
01.25.08
Packrat mind
One of the good things about being a packrat is that I usually can store a lot of “stuff” in my brain as well as on my desk and in my file cabinets. Today one of my coworkers asked me if our easy readers that were being selected by a vendor were also supposed to be cataloged. She couldn’t remember and had checked with another coworker, who also couldn’t remember if they were supposed to be cataloged. The answer was a quick and definite ”yes.” Good thing it was squirreled away in my brain (although it was also on the Outsourcing Wiki on the staff intranet).
Sometimes a memory like mine can be a liability, rather than an asset. I can remember something hurtful someone said to me in high school or what I wore to a Christmas party five years ago. It makes for some ugly fights with the spouse when you remember too much and they remember too little. This is not to say my memory is perfect or that I am one of those people who remembers EVERYTHING they ever said, did, ate, wore, etc., and is nearly crazy as a result. But having a good memory for what goes on and what has happened has certainly come in handy at work more than once in the last fifteen years! If it’s not in my memory, then it’s probably in one of my piles, or files, or somewhere in this mess….
