I am in love with the act of organizing and — more specifically — reorganizing.
Something about all the colors, categories, folders and subfolders makes me giddy. I adore finding new ways to arrange and rearrange information. I could spend days in Staples just staring at ways to file and color-code.
Exhilaration washes over me simply by the act of changing calendar software.
In the years since I chose a PalmPilot over a Daytimer paper notebook and pen, I have upgraded devices and switched desktop software countless times. I have ported my information from iCal to Entourage to Yahoo to Google to 30boxes to AirSet and back again, invariably losing some things along the way. Yet the ability to assign a tiny music note icon to all of my voice lessons — and track the number of auditions from both my Treo and my Mac — makes me feel alive.
However, during a recent organizational maelstrom, it became clear that, although my life looked pretty on my screen, I was actually getting nothing accomplished. I was spending more time preparing to do things than actually doing them.
In fact, my latest quest to re-organize has left my life in absolute disarray. My task lists now have task lists, and I have so many categories that my computer has run out of colors to assign to them. My brain has been unable to shut down at night because of the sheer bevy of options I have before me.
It is obvious that this time would be better spent working on, if nothing else, my career. Perhaps I could go to a dance class, or work on that new monologue. Or maybe I could do a mailing, or even go to an audition (or two!).
Yes, I could focus my energies on moving my life, and career, forward. Or I could choose the less mundane option: Figure out exactly how to automatically update my Treo, my Mac, and my husband's PC the moment something changes.
All of this organizing and re-organizing points to a bigger question: Why am I doing it in the first place?
I realized that there is one constant in my life: As soon as I am content with something, boredom sets in and I look for the next thing to change.
Case in point: My husband and I have been married for one year, and in that time I've changed my married name more than most people do in a lifetime. I went from Kerri Meade, to Kerri Meade Aab, to Kerri Anne Meade-Aab, to Kerri A.M. Aab (a personal favorite during the time I wanted to be a morning talk show host) to, finally, Kerri Aab.
The only reason I haven't changed it again is because the government is getting tired of my antics.
Also, in our first year of marriage my husband and I have moved four times. And the changes don't end when we settle in a place and unpack the boxes. We've been in our latest apartment for two short months and I have reconfigured our living room twice.
More recently, after three years of growing out a very short, very bad haircut, I am desperate to cut it again. The only thing stopping me from making this change is an expensive set of brand new headshots. Even with that weighing on me, every time I sit down in a stylist's chair I toy with the idea of telling her to take it all off and color me blonde!
The mere thought of change fills me with excitement. There is a thrill associated with it — not unlike the thrill I get when I'm onstage, I realize. The rush that comes over me when I'm choosing new organizational software, or cutting my hair, closely mirrors the one I get when I'm performing — a delight that makes me feel alive.
So do I look for change because I get bored, or when things are "normal" do they just seem boring? Does my passion for onstage drama doom me to a life off-stage that is spent always searching for it?
Here's where I'd love to provide some brilliant, succinct, Dear Abby-esque epiphany. This is the moment when I wish the clouds would part, heavenly light would shine down upon me, and I would dispense wisdom and knowledge the likes of which this column has never seen.
But alas, I don't have an answer to this mystery.
I realize that I may simply have to accept that my personal Holy Grail is the euphoria that comes from moving my couch or redesigning my website, filling the void during the times in between performances when I am forced to live in the "normal."
Of course, I could go to more auditions and pursue my career more aggressively in an effort to have far fewer "normal" times. Well, that or scour websites in search of the newest software to synch my new Google calendar account with my Treo.
I am so there....