I'm Disorganized With A Bad Short Term Memory

The headline pretty much says it all up top. I am disorganized, and have a bad short term memory.

I sit at my desk, with papers to the right of me, notebooks on my upper right. I am not sure what is in my various piles of paper. I always can find stuff, eventually. But sometimes eventually is a long time coming.

At work I get things done, I make lists, I execute.

At home I let projects linger, I forget to turn off the coffee pot, and it burns all day. I've done this several times. I have said I am going to stain our butcher block counter-top since I put it together, roughly a year ago. I have the stain and everything, I even have the brushes. I even have the sandpaper I asked Randi to buy because the unfinished wood has started to get stained by food. But I haven't done it.

I have promises to myself about things I would like to do, but I not sure, right now, about all of them. Because I am disorganized and have a bad short term memory. I made a list with all these things on it, but I feel like I even left some stuff off the list. In time I will probably lose the list altogether.

All this would be kind of cute, but it's making my life measurably worse. It frustrates Randi to no end, and rightfully so, because I am the master at only doing part of a task that she asks. She asked me to pick up some medication from the pharmacy, and they gave me one set of pills, but she had told me they would give me two. I had to go back and get the other once I got home. This made me late for a special dinner she had made for me for Valentine's Day. When I got home it was cold and I had to eat it by myself.

I've been late on paying our power bill, I've been late in returning library books and videos. It cost real money after a while. Folks, we live NEXT TO the library.

It's hurt my ambitions. I have found it harder and harder to make my extra-credit projects for life finished. I have sent out my book proposal to five agents, but I have six more to send it to. I have had their names for weeks.

Being disorganized with a bad short term memory means forgetting, sometimes, where you put your checkbook. Not a good thing to misplace. It mean I lost my birth certificate and had to spend two hours getting a new one. It means I haven't called the tax guy yet, though I said I would. It means forgetting to go to the super market on the way back from work, and then going once I get home anyway.

It means making my friends and family feel like they aren't as important to me as they are, because I forget things that I said I would do, or was late to do something that would have been easy to be early on. It means making life just that much harder on everyone, all the time.

It means feeling like a stereotypical doofus TV dad, only there is no laugh track. And the show never ends.

It means needing nine when the stitch in time would have been better.

It means not following through on so many things that I would like to do, and that would be worth doing.

It means making people I love feel less important to me than they really are.

It means having to apologize for things that I never should have done wrong, and fearing that some day this apology will be to my daughter. And knowing that I could undermine her trust in me.

I have finally started to realize just how dire a problem this really is. I don't know if I can improve my memory over night, but I want to take the first steps in becoming more organized. I ordered a book from Amazon about getting organized. If I am organized enough to read it I might get somewhere.

As for the memory issues, I think I have to be careful when I agree to do things to repeat the thing I agreed to do several times to myself at the point of agreement. Maybe sing it, and definitely write it down. When I make a plan write it in my day book. Then consult this same day book often. Often I write something down in the book and forget about it. Then when I read it later it's a virtual surprise to me, like a real boring version of "Memento."

But being disorganized with a bad short term memory is no joke. It's kept me from coming close to what I know is my potential: as a husband, father, writer and person.

I just have to remember to remember more.