Organizing, Digital Hoarding and Brushes with Mortality

Oh Fa-aack. I’ve been trying really, really hard to be a responsible grown-up. Now that my daughter is in grad-school, engaged, and Hubby and I are celebrating our 25th Wedding Anniversary this summer I have to come to grips with this life being the reality I have for the rest of my life. For some reason I have Peggy Lee’s Version of “Is That All There Is?” running through my mind. I
t took me all week to finish another post that has to be well-written, proofed, and appropriate for my business site.  I know that people can go back and forth between this blog and my business site, but not everyone who is looking for a research-savvy content creator will click through to my lifestyle blog.  It is on my take on The Writing Process.  There has been a blog sort of pay-it-forward, read-my-cool-friends-take-on-this-topic-too, blog-hop going around the inter-webs for the last many months.
Why did it take me so long to write that piece? I’m not the cool kid on the blog block (few seem to recognize my weird brilliance) so until now I hadn’t had an opportunity to participate until Chloe of Mountain asked if there was someone who would like to participate.  My hand popped up in the  best Horschack style and Chloe graciously extended an invite and included me. It should have posted days ago.  I had the local Tucson bloggers to whom I have passed the challenge all lined up.  But I felt like crap. And I don’t feel like doing anything but napping because of a reminder of my own temporary status in the world.
I had a  brush with mortality this past week that reminded me how tenuous life and health are.  I had bronchitis that would not go away and seemed to morph into other problems.  I finally went to the doctor on Tuesday after my discomfort extended beyond  the 10 days a cold lasts.  The cold turned bronchitis that became an ear and throat infection, and it was also a terrible undiagnosed sinus infection.  I knew I was in bad shape when all the places in my head where bones and connective  tissue join began to really, really hurt and  my eyes swelled shut.   I realized, “Holy shit, this is the kind of thing that kills old people. ”
The trip to my Doctor ensued and multiple drugs were prescribed.  The mega-antibiotic, contact-like substance, and super strong anti-inflammatory drugs decreased the inflammation in my ears, throat and nose by Wednesday night, and then blood began draining out from my sinuses.  Weirded me out.  So I’ve been down for over a week and not getting much accomplished with:

• my household.  That would be okay, except I live online or on the computer and have always only managed to maintain minimum hygienic standards in the home I make with my mad scientist, big drooling mastiff dog, two neurotic cats, one black African river turtle and assorted fish. (Fish configuration varies dependent upon frequency of the turtle’s bad moods that co-occur with fish disappearances.)
• planning the summer trip.  We are driving across country to Niagara Falls for our 25th.

I managed to break my glasses this past week too, so reading has been accomplished only with my new magnifying readers that can light up.  I will use them on my vacation this summer when we camp.
This next week I have to play catch up. on office and storage room organization,  spend several evenings at meetings for NOW, WordPress, and othert public meetings, find a gonga-deal on a truck type vehicle that is appropriate for traveling across the country with Hubby after BlogHer.  I need to find a house-sitter for that time period… and on and on.  But the thing that really makes me nutso is the digital organization in the office that I have to get done before I leave. I’m getting my physical collecting under control.  Hubby says I am a hoarder.  The organizer I hired says I’m not.  I think the overcrowding problem we have is because we have two tiny closets  mainly filled with wires and ductwork and other conduits of infrastructure and one walk-through closet between our bedroom and bath, no attic, and no basement.
I do, however, have a real problem with information. I am a digital hoarder.  Everything can go away in an instant.  I had logic boards die on several laptops, one after the other.  Then when I purchased my huge screen desktop I restored from several different back-ups.  Files were duplicated on different backups.  Long story short my filing system has gotten all messy.  I also have a partitioned drive to accommodate Windows, which I never use.  And I have a veritable plethora of business cards, bits of paper and the like that need to be organized with my receipt scanner and optical reader. So to make sense out of this mess I have purchased a 4 terra byte backup drive.  And next week I will start attacking the physical strata and digital disorganization in my office, after I complete the organization of my crafting room.
I think I will start by transferring everything from my desktop to the backup drive.  Then I erase and reformat my desktop which will get rid of the Windows partition.  Then I reinstall software and create an organizational structure that makes sense to me and that I can maintain.    I have no idea what that structure will be.  That scares me.  But I have to come up with it.  And then I have to maintain it.
I will document my process and share it with you… eventually. Then I can get down to writing all the sensible stuff that middle age women write about, right?  Nah.  I don’t think I will ever slide on in to sensibility, not even with great infrastructure.