Just a reminder to straighten your room

Happy New Year! And welcome to my Daily Madness blog. This is my first post to hopefully motivate me and you to categorize the chaos of life to live a madly passionate and successful existence. I'll be writing about film, faith and more, too.

Now I'm not going to act all guru-like and tell you how to kick off the new year with discussions of resolutions and surefire ways to accomplish your goals. But I want to take a moment and focus on mindset and a less cluttered brain.

Now I may sound like a voice from the past that told you to clean and straighten your room at least a thousand times. But even as adults, we should hear that every now and then.

You see, I have a tendency to let things stack up ... on my desk, my desk chair, my comfy chair, my other two desks, my bed, my floor, and, well, you get the picture. Every day I have to fight the urge to lay something down whether it's paperwork or laundry by telling myself I'll get right back to it instead of going ahead and dealing with it then. Oh, the lies we tell ourselves.

Organization has been, in particular, a later-in-life challenge for me as I take on more tasks and have now survived 21 bad driver vehicle crashes since age 7. By the grace of God I'm still alive, but the challenges that came with it, well, can be for another day's topic.

So I have to straighten my room and office to keep my life moving forward. It's vital to my proper daily function. As they say, an organized space lends to an organized mind. And an organized mind lends to a successful life.

So, a few days ago I finally recognized things were getting messy. I say "finally" as I came to accept this was just the way my life should look. I thought it wasn't so bad as I pretty much knew which small pile was which, or so I thought. Yet, as I sat there staring at the disorganization, reality set upon me. I was forgetting things I needed to do, wanted to do, and had goals to accomplish. I was even slacking off on filling out my high performance planner.

I also looked around and thought how boring and routine my furniture arrangement and personal spaces had become. Without moving to a new residence, I needed to feel like I had a new space, or, at least, a revitalized one.

Basically, I'm focusing on two offices: one downstairs and the other in my bedroom. Already, you can see a problem with this arrangement. Two home offices? Yep. And a work desk next to my bed? WARNING Will Robinson. The bed is a pit of quicksand wherein on occasion I get sucked into.

So, this is what I did this time as opposed to previous times. I sat down to more thoughtfully determine what the goal was with each piece of furniture.

So, I pulled out a desk smaller than my primary one and made that my planning desk. I rolled it to the foot of my bed to remind me I have stuff to accomplish as I crawl out of bed in the morning. Some folks like to plan at night, but that never worked well for me. Nighttime is for disengaging my brain as soon as I can. Furthermore, I added my Bible and Sunday School lesson book to the planning desk, as I tend to slack off if I have them any other place.

Now I'll call this planning desk my rocket booster desk. I can jet into the day better with my mission preprogrammed and my spirit refreshed with the knowledge of Him whom has my back, sides and front. Otherwise, if I planned at my primary desk it would add to the stuff on top of it, and I would have work staring me in the face.

Next, I slid my comfy chair next to my bookcase from it's more useless role on the far side of the room. I added a coffee pot to the top of the bookcase so it would feel more like an office, a place to work, not sleep during the day. I placed a TV tray next to the chair. I'll allow this to be my eating place when not downstairs at the dining table. No more eating at my desks or in my bed. Those serve different purposes.

Now my mind is becoming less cluttered as I see the updated organization around me.

This rearrangement wasn't necessarily a logical, step by step process. It was more of a trial and error, "please Lord help me figure this out" venture. I pushed, pulled, scooted, carried this thing and that, moving, readjusting and visualizing over and over until after a couple of hours it made sense. I decided early on not to get rid of all the small piles on the same day so as not to become overwhelmed.

Of course, some of the extraneous piles were deleted or placed properly as my small tables and other furniture pieces were targeted for specific purposes. Some of the papers I even threw away. Now that felt good. Are you like me and keep useless paperwork you think may become magically important one day? I say NO MORE! Hopefully, I can stick to that pronouncement. No. Forget "hopefully." I will STICK to it. I have to change some of the terms I use, like "hopefully" to "I will definitely" do it. Otherwise, I've set myself up for failure before getting out of the box. You know we have the inner voice that doesn’t always say the most positive and encouraging things.

Now I'm actually feeling my mind re-energizing. I'm not kidding. I feel the electricity flowing along my neurological pathways more forcefully. Why didn't I do this a year ago?

Lastly, the super-sized desk in my downstairs den I freed to become my vlogging and writing station. It's far enough away from my upstairs bed where I can't "accidentally" fall into it. That's right. The vlog I have been toying with to interview friends and others about the film business, entrepreneurship, and elsewise, can now happen. I moved the desk in front of the "guests" couch and even ordered a microphone for my iPhone where I talk into one side and my guests into the other. Who knows, maybe I'll become the next Conan or Joe Rogan. I would say Johnny Carson, but that seems sacrilegious.

Now I promised to keep this short as I value your time. I'll end here with this one pronouncement: STRAIGHTEN YOUR ROOM! and home office. I think you'll be reinvigorated, refreshed, revitalized, and face a fresher start for the new year when you do.