It happens every day. There will be a moment when I need to lay my hands on my debit card, mobile phone or car keys. Or my secateurs, or grafting knife, or my favourite jacket, or a garden fork I used yesterday. And everytime the sense of relief when I find them is palpable, each successful find delivers a moment of joy, the flip-side of the familiar gloom and frustration I endure when the sought item simply isn’t where I truly believed it would be.

I do try. I drive home and actively imagine putting my my car keys on the hook. Someone says something interesting on the radio, which reminds me of something a friend said, which reminds me we are meeting up soon to talk about a garden plan we are working on together, which reminds me that I need to check up on self-compacting gravel, and I walk in the door thinking that before I forget I must send an email to the contractor to ask him to get revised pricing to me by Friday. Which I do straight away. I put the kettle on while the PC is booting up and nip to the loo while the kettle is boiling. While waiting for the tea to brew I check for messages on the answerphone and scrabble around for a pen to write them down with and find one in the kitchen – oh yes, food! I go back to the PC, log in and make a speedy sandwich while my PC finishes waking up. Back to PC to email the contractor – done!

Now, where the **** did I put my car keys?

OK, so Clive’s Article is about untidy offices, not scatterbrain minds, but I think it’s much the same thing – the brain being unerringly drawn to more interesting topics than the order of paperwork or the location of keys. The pull of entropy. So, I think it’s time I faced up to a few things. I am pathologically untidy and physically disorganised. I have a very short attention span (milliseconds) and a similarly low boredom threshold, I indulge my own nonsense thought trains, forget where my possessions are and have no idea what my hands are doing when my brain is elsewhere. On the other hand, I am entrepreneurial, bold, share knowledge and possessions happily, I’m creative, change-hungry, rational, a good problem solver and take responsibility for everything I do – or don’t do. Perhaps these character sets are mutually exclusive. Not a typical post, but there you go.

December 7, 2008