Over the years, I have learned a lot about myself and my interactions with the world. There are so many things I’ve tried to control which were no where near being worth my effort. For the most part, I’ve learned that I don’t have these skills. While I am a systematic thinker, I am too emotional to see past my own heart. My emotion supersedes my logic unfortunately.

If I could paint a picture of what’s going on my head at any given time, it would be the image of a household junk drawer: The one-stop shop item that exists in every household around our planet that categorizes the uncategorizeable and organizes the unorganizeable (have I mentioned that making up words shows that you are creative?) Don’t act like you have complete order in your house, we all have junk drawers, just some are more organized than others. Today, my head feels like a catch all for all of the shit going on in my life. I’ve been asked recently why I’m looking for so much dramatic change in my life. I don’t think of it as change. I think of it as dumping the shit out of the junk drawer out on to the floor and then just walking away from it for a while.

I call it a change of perspective on the junk in my drawer. Think about it. You can easily go to Bed, Bath and Beyond or whatever retail outlet selling items to get the disorganized person now organized is still in business after this economic debacle we are riding through and buy a tray-based junk drawer organizer. We have one in our junk drawer. It’s a nice white plastic tray with bins for all of our crap and idiot proof stickers in each bin to show us where to put each paper clip, pair of pliers, post-it note, and rogue unusable key for something you used to own in the 80’s. Great, now I have a place to keep those three chartreuse thumb tacks for which I had no home. Probably going to need those someday.

Anyway, I need a tray-based junk drawer organizer for my head.

What it comes down to is that I’m exhausted with the concern of the risks related to every decision I make. Sometimes the magnitude of existence and responsibility wears on my soul so heavily I almost buckle under the downward pressure of the extreme weight of life’s reality. There’s this sense of being trapped into life’s catastrophe. I keep looking into my sons’ eyes and see the innocence of their hearts and the need for shelter from harm. I worry that I can’t provide it.

I guess I’m just trying to hold on to that little bit of sanity I have left and make the best decisions possible based on the chaos and the lack of my cerebrally-located junk drawer organizer. The web of life and its decisions have dramatically complicated the way I live each day. And I thought preschool was a challenge. With this entry, I am forcing myself to remain a little vague due to the complexity of the decisions and the web of their inter-relations. Otherwise, this would turn in the epic “War and Peace” of my blog-based ramblings. No one wants that. It’s hard enough for me to be brief as it is. What I have discovered about my complexities is that they affect my mental and physical health more than I was aware. This is where the real complication exists at its base. I’m struggling with making decisions, constantly evaluating the moving targets, doing my best to assess risks, and mitigating the collateral damage as it happens. But as I wrestle with this 1000 lbs. gorilla, I see that my behavior and the way that I cope with the world (read here: my family) become adversely affected. To break it down, that sucks balls. Everything I fight and make decisions for are becoming the target of my degrading behavior and worldly tolerance.

What do you do when nothing else has worked? Change your approach.

Call it the season or call it as just me whining to get attention. I feel like I would significantly benefit from a tray-based organizer that I could shove in to my head that could systematically categorize the clutter. I suppose there’s no Bed, Bath and Beyond of the mind so I am out of luck there. But given the state of the world and reality as we all know it, I just want someone to tell me it’s going to be OK and mean it. I am trying to believe this myself and I am having a very difficult time.