yeah, it's all alright, I guess it's all alright

Look at that balance and order... this makes me happy.

Something tells me that I don't do Pinterest like most other folks. I can't say that I visit the actual site a whole lot, but I do send a lot of pieces to my various boards. Sometimes I go back and use them as resources, like a recipe that looked good, but mostly I think I'm using the site to simply stockpile all the reassurances that I know I'll need someday. Or could absolutely use every day.

You see, it's often hard to put into words how my brain works, and I now have a whole collection of articles and personal stories that prove that I'm not alone in my companionship with Anxiety. It's a bitch of a pal, though I honestly don't know how I'd live without it. Actually, it's a little scary to imagine what it would be like without this invisible drive to always be organized and on top of things pushing me...

It makes me anxious to think about not being anxious. Let that one sink in.

I like order. I need it. I crave it. While my home is certainly not always neat and tidy, I do know my mental and physical well-being is negatively affected when things pile up. What I've known for a long time is these reactions can be muted by making a plan. If I know the kitchen is a disaster, but I record on my to-do list that I will clean it up Wednesday after work, then I can stop thinking about it. Even if it's only Tuesday night.

In that way, it's not that I think I'm going to forget that this task needs to be completed, for it's obvious to anyone walking into the kitchen that this shit needs to get done, but a plan makes it sort of handled. Pre-handled, you can say. A plan means that it WILL get done.

There are other items on the to-do list that get put there out of fear that they will get forgotten. If I realize that I've forgotten to do something, I'm a wreck. The mental energy that could be put to use figuring out how to make things right first gets shifted into high gear beating myself up for forgetting it in the first place. How could I have let this happen? What is wrong with me?

I recently had the experience of messing up but in the opposite way of missing a meeting. Instead, I made my daughter and husband show up with me an entire day early for a teacher conference. It was easy, in hindsight, to see how I made the mistake inputting the meeting on the calendar, but I spent an entire two days mulling over how I screwed this up. This is not like me. This is not something that I do. I don't like being late, that's for damn sure, but 24 hours early is pushing it even for me.

Plans and routines make my life run. I recently asked a tech-expert cousin for a recommendation for a list-making program, and what she suggested has quickly become a significant feature in my daily life. So much better than what I had previously been using, this program is far from complex, but it has helped provide me regular assurance that things are not going to slip through the cracks.

I know I'm not alone. I have an entire Pinterest board of articles and posts to prove it, but it doesn't make it any less exhausting to need to regularly reassure yourself that things are indeed alright.

Title inspiration: "All Alright" by fun.