The Wrong Question to ask

A while ago, after I picked up an old notebook from 3 years before,

and what I read was gold,

ideas I'd written and forgotten and

now was just remembering all over again...

I HAD SUCH A GOOD IDEA, why did I do nothing with it?

Seeing this gold I'd forgotten so completely, I had to wonder:

Why do I forget my good ideas?

Am I hiding things from myself?

Is this self sabotage?

Will I ever straighten out my brain?

(Why can't it work in ABC order instead of FMQ?)

Possible answers:

It's trauma.

It's neurodiversity.

It's resistance.

I'm just complicated.

BUT ASKING WHY DIDN'T SOLVE THE PROBLEM.

All of my ideas used to be trapped

in notebooks, closed up, on a shelf, or

in various documents.

All over the place.

It was too much.

I mostly forgot things the instant I looked away.

At a certain point though, I just decided that...

"WHY DO I FORGET?"

Does. Not. Matter.

This is the WRONG question to ask.

Who cares. Enough.

The right question is:

Given that this is my pattern.

It is what it is.

Now WHAT?

So that leads me to much more useful answers:

like...

I HAVE TO MAKE IT EASIER TO FIND STUFF.

Being able to find stuff means being able to reread it.

And when I reread things THEN I REMEMBER.

Bam-- solution.

OK easier said than done, though.

How to tame the:

messiest of drafts,

half-awake thoughts,

rants in the car talking out loud to myself...

Without it literally being a full time job?

To do that I tried a lot of things over the last ten years.

I kept looking and learning from different teachers until I found something that worked.

Finally, after a long search I've found a few free programs that have been really working for me.

Now I've been living a NEW LIFE and have been organizing the contents of my notebooks for several years straight.

Why do I care so much?

Because it is life changing:

Finding the right sections of my writing and rereading them is a magic spell:

Rereading those words is a spell that wakes me up from my Cinderella sleep.

It interrupts the patterns --

I'll give you example of notes that WOKE ME UP recently. Keep reading below.

But this is why I am a full on digital organization geek now!

It's for moments like this:

alighting on an old thought or piece of writing that I forgot about...

something that teaches me about myself,

about my feelings,

about HOW I WORK.

It feels so good.

It feels so right.

Like tumblers aligning, opening a lock, opening a door smooth as butter.

It's jaw dropping just how easy it is to forget essential information and ideas like this.

Writing that moves me. The things I love.

I am celebrating how far I have come.

And if you want to learn what works for me...

Join the waitlist for the Digital Organization Membership

where I'll share

my system for organizing my journals, content, and writing

plus

my system for organizing and making progress on projects.

and you'll get 50% off

===> $30 total for 3 months of membership

only available for the first week it opens...

Click here to join the Digital Organization waitlist for more info.

And enjoy clips from my notebook below!

What's in my notebook...

How have you been lately?

What's in your notebook?

Me: I am burned out! I am recovering.

I still feel like my brain is broken.

Some things I am doing to recover:

I'm still trying to start my mornings off my phone, off email, off social media, and

instead write, heal, be in my own zone.

Lately I also review old journal entries I've digitized in the morning!

And it's amazing to see what I always forget, the things that remain the same across time.

Like this one titled "Desires 2022:

I long for peace and quiet, but I feel like the priorities I circle around are money and business.

I tend to get lost in a never-ending hustle without conscious exertion of my intention to do otherwise.

I crave peace, solitude, safety, isolation, a buffer, a warmth, a reconnection with myself, a spiritual attuning, a wonder, a curiosity in the beauty that is already here, not chasing after something outside of me.

Those days I can look outside of the window and feel the whole world is open to me, without having to lift a finger. The power of my dreams, my imagination and who I already am.

This resonates so much with me TO THIS DAY.

As I read it, I noticed how being too tired to work on my business and make money is HIGH on my stress list.

It causes me to be hard on myself and impatient for things I can't control.

And that can keep me from feeling my desired state of restoration.

I can totally forget this pattern I have to fixate on this.

How interesting to catch myself in the same stress pattern, longing for the same things.

AGAIN.

Also, I found a piece called "Money Does Not Equal Self Worth" that I wrote in 2019.

It speaks to the same theme, and

how I've overcome worrying about money when I only had $5 in my bank account.

(It's now available on Patreon for $1.)

The point is: I FORGET important things