Direction Home…

I’m in trouble. Not again. Still. What changes is the amplitude. It is modulated. Only a few percent. I’ve never known when it wasn’t this way. The AIDS pandemic, doesn’t have to be this way. I don’t know about my crises. Fifty years and a dozen ‘mental health professionals’ have been to no avail.

I am not one of The Organized.

I missed an appointment with Lauren. She had offered me a Home Start planner book. I appreciate the thought, but I’ve been that route. During one of my many ’bouts of unemployment, I decided I needed a planner book. $50. Way too much for an unemployed guy. Then too none of the layouts seemed right. I went to Bob Slate’s, Harvard Square’s premier stationary store. For $17 I made the most beautiful planner book in the history of planner books. It had just the things in it that I needed. It was great – my creation. It helped me do stuff. It made me a better person without even being reincarnated. I liked it. I felt it was my friend.

As time went on I found that I hadn’t quite got it right. Was I wrong initially or had my needs changed? I don’t know. It became an obsession – finding the design that would achieve my real goal — programming myself to perfection. It became a burden – an albatross of my own making. It became my enemy. Finally, I rose up. I revolted against my own creation – an extension of myself. I haven’t used it since.

I am not one of The Organized. I misplace things. I lose things. I forget things. It has gotten worse over the years. In the last 6 years, I was in ‘private’¹ housing.  It got a lot worse. My roomate made no attempt to make room for me to put my stuff. Instead he blamed me for being disorganized. Even The Organized would have had a hard time using only the interior of the rooms. But then The Organized don’t admit to mistakes. They lie. And my roomate was not one of The Organized. He just lied.

I think homelessness has made it worse. Carrying all your worldly possessions on your back means constant packing and unpacking. It’s easy to loose things. But I’m too disorganized to be sure. The Organized were unable to tell me how to connect with Lauren over the holidays. It took me four tries. Wait ’till the New Year. The Organized equivocate.

¹I don’t have time now to give the Lockean justification of private property, as portrayed to tens of thousands of Harvard students by Professor Micheal, the thorough trouncing it deserves. I’m in crisis, still.