One-Word 2016
“Organize”
Written by Dan McDonald,
The Panhandling Philosopher
I am an old bachelor. Those of us
who have remained single most of our lives seldom live balanced lives. Most people
learn balance living with other people, partly because they are compelled to do
some things simply because others expect it of them. People living alone set up
their own time schedules, habits, and ways of doing things without the
interference of others. It may sound ideal for a moment, but mostly it means
that those of us living alone miss out on the beneficial friction of iron
sharpening iron that occurs in close relationships. Bachelors generally will
fall into imbalances that might have been minimized by living with other
people.
For me one of the ways my bachelor
life is imbalanced is that I am utterly disorganized. Record-keeping,
house-keeping, use of time, getting to bed at a decent time, pretty much
everything gets put off to the whim of my next decision. Writing is something I
like to do. But it is also a tempting escape to which I flee rather than doing
the things I should do. So in 2016 I am adopting a one-word theme for my New
Year’s resolution. If I follow my New Year’s theme I will probably be writing
less often in 2016 than in 2015. I will still write but hopefully shorter
pieces and determined more within the parameters of something I should be doing
because it is using my time well rather than something I am doing just to
escape what I should be doing.
My goal is to review on a monthly
basis one aspect of becoming organized and working on making that a habit for
the next month. I have read somewhere that new habits take around three weeks
to become part of life. If that is true by taking one part of organization a
month I should be able to give myself one month on each part to include into my
life. Will plans work out in practice as they were hoped for in theory? Perhaps
they won’t. But will practices of life ever change if no plan is ever adopted
to change the practices that have become disabling habits. I am pretty certain
if no plan is adopted to change the way my life is organized, I will remain
disorganized. So the best I can do is to create a plan and seek the Lord’s help
in implementing it.
As tax season nears it seems like
one of my first needs will be to attack two birds with one stone. That may seem
futile but the two go together. I have receipts that lay wherever I put them in
a cluttered house. I have a cluttered house that is an embarrassment to me. So
I begin there. I will begin to clean up and organize my home, room by room, and
in the process work on my record-keeping. I began today discovering if there
were still kitchen counters underneath the things I left on them. They are
still there. I thought they would be, but that was just faith in the unseen.
One day’s work, a couple of hours is a beginning. But isn’t that the way for
whatever improvements we imagine making in a year? The plan is only as good as
the day by day implementation. The pitch is only as good as the follow through.
The architect’s plans are only as good as the construction company’s
workmanship. The most visionary of dreams only become reality through labor.
This one-word theme “organize” is
the closest thing for me to a 2016 New Year’s resolution. I seldom get
responses to my blogs, so it would be amazing if you were to share some of your
approaches to making changes in life, New Year’s resolutions, and the like. Do
you prefer a number of resolutions? I find the one-word theme hopeful to
pursue. We will see how it works. To you, I offer my best wishes and prayer on
your desires to improve a facet of life in this newest year.
In the words of Walter Cronkite, the
former CBS news anchor with the authoritative sounding voice, I close off
saying, “And that’s the way it is, today” the 1st of January, 2016.
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