A Writer's Biography, Volume III, Part 8: The Eternal Struggle to be Organized

Prose Night at the Writing Life, 12 October 2024

Photo by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash

When I was a kid - probably between my late teen and mid-twenties - I was a big admirer of Hunter S. Thompson. Back then I clocked into his approach to journalism, immersing himself in a story and trying to get a different perspective on it, different from all the conventional journalists out there. Back then, I thought I’d get a shot at being a journalist like him. I got to be a journalist, but one who was, for reasons of opportunity and circumstance, much more conventional.

At the time, I also appreciated the times when he would procrastinate on a story and then end up pulling out something totally different from what he expected out of… somewhere. As someone who appreciated procrastination, from an intimate standpoint, that is, I could admire someone who could pull something out of a failed (or premature) attempt at writing.

The long and short of it is, I decided to turn what was going to be a book review about an organized research system into one of my periodic A Writer’s Biography posts, one of a series of essays of various quality where I decided to write about my experiences with writing and what has gradually evolved into the vague beginnings of what might be called a memoir¹.

If I ever did put together some form of memoir, I wouldn’t put just the text in I’ve written online. I admit some of the work I did a few years back needs some work. Still, there seems to be something there I might be happy with sharing in full at the end.

For those who have not yet encountered these posts, those labled “Volume I” have to do with my youth and my first experiences with writing. “Volume II” are posts stemming from my time as a young man, when I started to make a living as someone who knew how to write, first as a journalist and then as a (relatively) young teacher. “Volume III” are tales from my middle age and onward, as I have worked in all seriousness to develop and expand on my writing abilities.

Today is going to be one of those “Volume III” posts, as I detail a continuing conundrum I have dealt with for many years, both inside and outside the writing world. To be honest, for a kid who was as disorganized as I was, the mere fact I actually care about organization is a bit of a victory. A little bit of one.

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You used to know those kids in elementary school. For the older adults in the room, they were the kids who had their old metal desks packed with errant papers, old assignments, projects, and folders. Some of you younger kids might remember those kids just stuffing it into their lockers, or (more likely) their backpacks, because apparently students don’t use lockers anymore. Regardless of the circumstances, you would watch every month or two months or so as a teacher helped clean out their desk/locker/backpack, toss the unecessary papers, and organize the rest into new or used folders and storage. And then it would maintain some sense for at least a month or two.

Reader, I was that kid.

Ever since then, for forty years and more, I have bounced back and forth between total disorganization and an effort to find an organizational system perfect for my needs. As I have gotten older (not old) and grayer, I have leaned more toward being organized than disorganized, and attempted to have a care for where I placed important things. Now, I have not yet come across a perfect system for store all my information, nor have I come across an all-encompassing system as such. I’m still looking, however.

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Reader, I have tried so many techniques and systems to try and keep track of my life. All of them have had some success, but none have been a perfect solution. I’ve used calendar planners which sort of work, but not quite. Google Calendar helps me keep on track with my professional meetings, when I have to meet with people in my teaching career, but doesn’t do too much for my writing. Microsoft OneNote helps me put together a lot of information together in multi-media, but it doesn’t quite help when I don’t have access to the Internet².