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I appreciate the responses, and that they're not ugly in response. It helps to know I'm not the only one this bothers.
I am NOT attacking anyone in here, I promise, but I will say I do sometimes hate the responses I hear, or at least the ramifications of applying them. Those would include "retrace your steps" or "put everything in its place." With respect to the first--that's too much work. If you recall that clip from "Seinfeld" where George Costanza (okay, bad role model) is in the bank with his jug of change and they won't roll it for him, and when they give him coin rolls and tell him he can do it, he replies incredulously "what, you want me to quit my job?" That's how this feels, it feels like it's such an overwhelming and all-encompassing and laborious sort of thing that I would practically have to quit my job and my "job" now would be 24/7 tracking every last item I own. No, thank you.
No, instead, my expectation, as ridiculous as it may be, is that these items should just BE THERE, period, with NO effort required on my part. Zero, zilch. It should be like breathing--I don't have to think about oxygen, where to find it, how to purify it, or regulate the amount of intake, and how to exhale, and where to dispose of the CO2, and so on. No, I just breathe--and heck, without breathing, you die, but yet I don't have to do anything but sit and it just happens. I absolutely want this to be that way--an absolute minimum of effort required, and BAM!, everything is where I need it, without all the searching.
The whole "put everything in its place" response--the problem with that, besides that (again) it's too much work, is that you can't do that with every item you own. How many of us assign a spot for every single item we own, every last one? There's no way. We may have specific spots for a FEW things (and in fact my doing this with respect to always hanging up our car keys on a nail by the door has worked wonders), and general areas for specific items, but we hardly have an assigned spot for every last item. It's impossible, and even if it were--again, it's too much work.
In the case of the tablet, I do somewhat have a "place" for it, in that it tends to sit on the nightstand. When I found it, it was under the blanket of the bed, right beside this nightstand. To me, that's close enough that it shouldn't have taken more than 20-30 seconds to find it. To be "penalized" as it were with a nearly hour long search for it just because ONE TIME I didn't put it in that exact spot, and it was only 5-9 feet away in the same general idea, that's just too strict of a disciplined type of life to have to live. Come on God, cut me a break here. Help out. Get off your butt and DO something if you're supposed to be so freaking powerful.
There have been times where I was looking for something but couldn't find it, but found another one--example, I perhaps couldn't find my favorite pair of wire cutters, but I found another pair and just kept on, figuring I'd find my favorite pair later. Other times I'm more anal--my brother-in-law and I were working on making me a storage building, and I had just the day before gotten a particular tape measure that I really liked, but when it came time to measure something, I couldn't find it. I was able to quickly find another, but I didn't like the other one, and I really wanted the previous tape measure, and for some 30 minutes I held things up because I was determined that I wanted THAT tape measure. I finally gave up and went ahead, and it turned up later, yet rather than saying "wow, I let these things bother me too much," my response was more that of "if the damned thing would've turned up immediately like it was SUPPOSED to, it would've been better."
And I have to say, today, the day after last night, I am feeling much that same way. Rather than thinking "wow, I really flipped out hard over that," I'm still like "if the damned thing had turned up like it was supposed to, I wouldn't have had to get so nasty." I tend to lean towards Christian thinking in my theology, yet this sort of thing has caused me to start leaning more towards agnostic or even being an aethiest, because in my mind God ought to get off his azz and DO SOMETHING in such occasions, yell out from the sky "you left it under your sheets" and let us just get on with this. I work at a job already, I and my wife have spent countless hours making the house look better, yet STILL this happens. It's so annoying, I'm like "help out God or get the efff out of my life and go hump yourself."
I appreciate the responses, and that they're not ugly in response. It helps to know I'm not the only one this bothers.
I am NOT attacking anyone in here, I promise, but I will say I do sometimes hate the responses I hear, or at least the ramifications of applying them. Those would include "retrace your steps" or "put everything in its place." With respect to the first--that's too much work. If you recall that clip from "Seinfeld" where George Costanza (okay, bad role model) is in the bank with his jug of change and they won't roll it for him, and when they give him coin rolls and tell him he can do it, he replies incredulously "what, you want me to quit my job?" That's how this feels, it feels like it's such an overwhelming and all-encompassing and laborious sort of thing that I would practically have to quit my job and my "job" now would be 24/7 tracking every last item I own. No, thank you.
No, instead, my expectation, as ridiculous as it may be, is that these items should just BE THERE, period, with NO effort required on my part. Zero, zilch. It should be like breathing--I don't have to think about oxygen, where to find it, how to purify it, or regulate the amount of intake, and how to exhale, and where to dispose of the CO2, and so on. No, I just breathe--and heck, without breathing, you die, but yet I don't have to do anything but sit and it just happens. I absolutely want this to be that way--an absolute minimum of effort required, and BAM!, everything is where I need it, without all the searching.
The whole "put everything in its place" response--the problem with that, besides that (again) it's too much work, is that you can't do that with every item you own. How many of us assign a spot for every single item we own, every last one? There's no way. We may have specific spots for a FEW things (and in fact my doing this with respect to always hanging up our car keys on a nail by the door has worked wonders), and general areas for specific items, but we hardly have an assigned spot for every last item. It's impossible, and even if it were--again, it's too much work.
In the case of the tablet, I do somewhat have a "place" for it, in that it tends to sit on the nightstand. When I found it, it was under the blanket of the bed, right beside this nightstand. To me, that's close enough that it shouldn't have taken more than 20-30 seconds to find it. To be "penalized" as it were with a nearly hour long search for it just because ONE TIME I didn't put it in that exact spot, and it was only 5-9 feet away in the same general idea, that's just too strict of a disciplined type of life to have to live. Come on God, cut me a break here. Help out. Get off your butt and DO something if you're supposed to be so freaking powerful.
There have been times where I was looking for something but couldn't find it, but found another one--example, I perhaps couldn't find my favorite pair of wire cutters, but I found another pair and just kept on, figuring I'd find my favorite pair later. Other times I'm more anal--my brother-in-law and I were working on making me a storage building, and I had just the day before gotten a particular tape measure that I really liked, but when it came time to measure something, I couldn't find it. I was able to quickly find another, but I didn't like the other one, and I really wanted the previous tape measure, and for some 30 minutes I held things up because I was determined that I wanted THAT tape measure. I finally gave up and went ahead, and it turned up later, yet rather than saying "wow, I let these things bother me too much," my response was more that of "if the damned thing would've turned up immediately like it was SUPPOSED to, it would've been better."
And I have to say, today, the day after last night, I am feeling much that same way. Rather than thinking "wow, I really flipped out hard over that," I'm still like "if the damned thing had turned up like it was supposed to, I wouldn't have had to get so nasty." I tend to lean towards Christian thinking in my theology, yet this sort of thing has caused me to start leaning more towards agnostic or even being an aethiest, because in my mind God ought to get off his azz and DO SOMETHING in such occasions, yell out from the sky "you left it under your sheets" and let us just get on with this. I work at a job already, I and my wife have spent countless hours making the house look better, yet STILL this happens. It's so annoying, I'm like "help out God or get the efff out of my life and go hump yourself."
As an atheist, I'm sorry, but that has to be one of the silliest reasons hands down for turning to atheism. You need a therapist to work through some stuff. You would probably also benefit from meditation.
Seriously, this is really irrational thinking on your part.
Hi - its not really hard work, if you think that having a place for everything eliminates the whole lot of work you spent looking for the thing, and the very much anger you felt having to tear the place apart to look for it. now which would be less work - keeping your tablet on top of your table after using it, which takes 2 seconds, and will take 2 seconds to find it, or spending 3 hours tearing your house apart, getting mad and all that?
you might get some plastic shoe boxes at the store and store your groups of things in there, like your tools, and then put that box on a shelf in your closet. stuff like your keys you have to put it somewhere each day, so keep it in one place. same with your watch, glasses, etc.
then if you don't have everything strewn all over the house, it will be EASY to see it even if you do leave it in another place, you might have too much clutter/stuff in your view, and you cant see anything. could that be it? you have too much stuff and you cant see anything? happens to me, so I know about this
ps.. stuff does not magically go to a specific place, nor does it magically appear (unless you get The Clapper) ... you have to do it. that is how the magic happens. its not hard work, its hard work having to tear apart your house and tear about things for an hour to find something
by the way, if you put something down and your wife moves it, that might be part of the problem.
The whole "put everything in its place" response--the problem with that, besides that (again) it's too much work, is that you can't do that with every item you own. How many of us assign a spot for every single item we own, every last one? There's no way. We may have specific spots for a FEW things (and in fact my doing this with respect to always hanging up our car keys on a nail by the door has worked wonders), and general areas for specific items, but we hardly have an assigned spot for every last item. It's impossible, and even if it were--again, it's too much work.
It's not too much work if putting in a little effort will save you frustration later. Have you never heard the phrase "a place for everything and everything in its place"? And most people do assign locations for most things. The keys are in a basket next to the door; the shoes are lined up in the closet; phone and charger are on the desk; the eyeglasses are in their case on the bookshelf; the screwdriver is in the toolbox. It doesn't take a lot of time to be relatively organized, and the payoff is you don't run around looking for things because they're where they're supposed to be. You can't really expect order from chaos; nor can you assign blame to an inanimate object when it really falls on you.
Last edited by fleetiebelle; 08-15-2014 at 08:29 AM..
Wow...whose fault is it that you lose these items? You need to get organized...and you need more patience. Calling in sick and missing appointments over trivial things is over the top. I would see a psychologist for that if I were you. You don't want to continue to be this way all of your life.
It's all too much work, especially when you are already working at a job that PAYS you (this one doesn't) and you come home tired. You need some help. To have to do all of this manually is just exhausting.
"You can't expect order from chaos"--the thing is, it's not "chaotic" around here anyway. The house is not in squalor. It's clean. If it were in squalor and I was STILL expecting things to be where I wanted them, then okay, but it's not, and that's where a lot of this "venting" I'm doing is coming from--to wit, how much work does one have to do? Gee whiz. If I have to spend more than, say, 5 minutes a day organizing, that's too much, it really is.
Again, understand--I'm "venting" somewhat. In fact, I have a storage building, and I made a point to mark off a certain section of it for tools like drills and the like. I actually took steps towards organization. I tend to put most of my tools in there, and when I need them, typically I find them.
Yet, the trouble is, you get to working and to have to walk back and forth from where you're working and return to the storage place to put a tool away when you're "on a roll" with a task. It's a major interruption, VERY major interruption. When you're "on a roll," you instead will just put the tool aside for the moment so you can stay on your "roll." Further, later, when you're done, having to put all of those tools away when you're tired, it's the LAST thing you want to do, you'd almost rather get attacked by a tiger in a phone booth than to have to do that. Later on, after you've rested, then yes you feel more up to it.
And this is the thing--I do all of that, and it helps, yet on occasion, quite often actually, items STILL go missing. I do tend to keep my tablet in a "given" place--it typically is on my nightstand. That I instead put it on the bed barely 5 feet away--I'm sorry, but I think that's good enough, and any supernatural forces (God) at that point ought to step in and cover the difference, even if it's simply tapping me on the shoulder or "tickling my brain" to where I go "oh, I remember, I left it on the bed--there it is!" Throw me a freaking bone, do something. I'm working hard here, how much should I have to do? For me to HAVE to put it on the nightstand EVERY SINGLE TIME else lose it--that's too picky. The bed right beside the nightstand, that should be good enough.
Also, the prior time I lost it, that was barely 2 weeks ago. That's too soon. Also, in that case, it was in the car the whole time, where I THOUGHT it was, but I actually couldn't see it even while staring right at it. My wife had to see it, and we had even drove all the way back into town some 25 miles at the prior place, where I thought I had left it, doing the whole "retracing steps" thing, even though I think it's too much work. It was in the car, the whole time, but I couldn't see it.
Sorry, but yes, at such a time, I think God or some higher being ought to come in and just fix the problem. It's too exhausting, too stressful, and it ought not happen, ever, no matter what. Period.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Classy Sassy
Wow...whose fault is it that you lose these items? You need to get organized...and you need more patience. Calling in sick and missing appointments over trivial things is over the top. I would see a psychologist for that if I were you. You don't want to continue to be this way all of your life.
It's not my fault, not when I do as much work as I do TRYING but still failing. How much freaking work do you have to do? I don't mind a therapist or the like, except I can tell you I have no interest in being tolerant of this, absolutely none. I want it fixed, and without it being so much work on my part. Like I said, it won't happen, but what I would love is my becoming wealthy enough that I could hire someone to be around me 24/7 doing nothing but tracking every item I own, to where when I need something I'd tell him "get my fork with the blue handle" or whatever, and 5 seconds later--there it is. Call me delusional or say I'm avoiding reality, but so be it--this is too much work, it's really exhausting, and it shouldn't be like this.
I do hate losing things but I do not get as extreme as you do. You remind me of my brother a bit. He was very hot headed. The fact that you can't let go tells me you have some issues that could be helped. I mean this nicely and not as an insult.
St Anthony are and I are close friends. Or "Tony" as my mother calls him.
He is the St of lost things.
I'm being a big tongue in cheek, but that was in response to "G-d helping out" comment.
I am embarrassed how crazy mad I can get looking for something. I have emptied drawers and pulled out everything from a closet in search of something. I mostly frustrated but mad that I never have a working system and I am too lazy/crazy to be on top of this. I am the type too that needs things out in the open or they don't exist. I have tried for 25 years to magically become one of those organized ppl - and I have failed all those 25 years.
As far as important things - I am very very good at keeping those things in their place. I agree with your comments about every item, but be steadfast on your tablet, phone, wallet, keys important docs, etc. I always know where those things are. I keep my watch in a drawer when not using because it drives me crazy not to be wearing it.
Everything else though - oy. I think half my day is spent looking for things.
It's all too much work, especially when you are already working at a job that PAYS you (this one doesn't) and you come home tired. You need some help. To have to do all of this manually is just exhausting.
"You can't expect order from chaos"--the thing is, it's not "chaotic" around here anyway. The house is not in squalor. It's clean. If it were in squalor and I was STILL expecting things to be where I wanted them, then okay, but it's not, and that's where a lot of this "venting" I'm doing is coming from--to wit, how much work does one have to do? Gee whiz. If I have to spend more than, say, 5 minutes a day organizing, that's too much, it really is.
Again, understand--I'm "venting" somewhat. In fact, I have a storage building, and I made a point to mark off a certain section of it for tools like drills and the like. I actually took steps towards organization. I tend to put most of my tools in there, and when I need them, typically I find them.
Yet, the trouble is, you get to working and to have to walk back and forth from where you're working and return to the storage place to put a tool away when you're "on a roll" with a task. It's a major interruption, VERY major interruption. When you're "on a roll," you instead will just put the tool aside for the moment so you can stay on your "roll." Further, later, when you're done, having to put all of those tools away when you're tired, it's the LAST thing you want to do, you'd almost rather get attacked by a tiger in a phone booth than to have to do that. Later on, after you've rested, then yes you feel more up to it.
And this is the thing--I do all of that, and it helps, yet on occasion, quite often actually, items STILL go missing. I do tend to keep my tablet in a "given" place--it typically is on my nightstand. That I instead put it on the bed barely 5 feet away--I'm sorry, but I think that's good enough, and any supernatural forces (God) at that point ought to step in and cover the difference, even if it's simply tapping me on the shoulder or "tickling my brain" to where I go "oh, I remember, I left it on the bed--there it is!" Throw me a freaking bone, do something. I'm working hard here, how much should I have to do? For me to HAVE to put it on the nightstand EVERY SINGLE TIME else lose it--that's too picky. The bed right beside the nightstand, that should be good enough.
Also, the prior time I lost it, that was barely 2 weeks ago. That's too soon. Also, in that case, it was in the car the whole time, where I THOUGHT it was, but I actually couldn't see it even while staring right at it. My wife had to see it, and we had even drove all the way back into town some 25 miles at the prior place, where I thought I had left it, doing the whole "retracing steps" thing, even though I think it's too much work. It was in the car, the whole time, but I couldn't see it.
Sorry, but yes, at such a time, I think God or some higher being ought to come in and just fix the problem. It's too exhausting, too stressful, and it ought not happen, ever, no matter what. Period.
It's not my fault, not when I do as much work as I do TRYING but still failing. How much freaking work do you have to do? I don't mind a therapist or the like, except I can tell you I have no interest in being tolerant of this, absolutely none. I want it fixed, and without it being so much work on my part. Like I said, it won't happen, but what I would love is my becoming wealthy enough that I could hire someone to be around me 24/7 doing nothing but tracking every item I own, to where when I need something I'd tell him "get my fork with the blue handle" or whatever, and 5 seconds later--there it is. Call me delusional or say I'm avoiding reality, but so be it--this is too much work, it's really exhausting, and it shouldn't be like this.
Look, man, everyone on here thinks you sound irrational - that should tell you something. I UNDERSTAND your frustration to a certain extent - I have severe ADD and a disproportionate part of my life is spent looking for things I've lost. It has a significant negative impact on my life. But you seem to think you deserve an easy solution laid out in front of you and that is purely irrational. As a complete stranger reading your posts, I'm actually very concerned about you.
You need to talk to a mental health professional because your current mindset is going to lead you to nowhere but further frustration, disappointment and unhappiness.
Like I said, ADD/ADHD is a definite possibility, but it could be something else. It really sounds like you need to get help on this to move forward and address this.
Look, man, everyone on here thinks you sound irrational - that should tell you something. I UNDERSTAND your frustration to a certain extent - I have severe ADD and a disproportionate part of my life is spent looking for things I've lost. It has a significant negative impact on my life. But you seem to think you deserve an easy solution laid out in front of you and that is purely irrational. As a complete stranger reading your posts, I'm actually very concerned about you.
Of course I want an easy solution, and I don't think it's irrational at all. Do you want to have to continue to spend, as you put it, a disproportionate amount of time looking for things? Is that something you like having to do? Think about what you COULD be doing with all of that time instead if things would stop becoming lost, if they were just there. You could be going to the lake, or enjoying a game, or enjoy a walk in the woods, rather than having to deal with all of that irritating grunt work.
I like to say that I have an "air conditioning" mentality. To wit: prior to, say, 150 years ago, when it became hot, there was no real solution to it, you had to learn how to COPE with the heat, there was no escaping it (other than, say, swimming). I can guarantee you that people, especially in the Christian community, were saying "this is God's way of testing you or developing your character" or "just think how much this will cause you to appreciate the cooler weather," and on and on.
But now, what happens? Almost any church out there, if the air conditioning breaks, they shut down until it's repaired. I guarantee you most Christians get in their air conditioned cars and will fix their A/C the minute it breaks, they don't let it stay that way so they can have their character developed. They fix it, so they can go back to pushing a button to chase the heat away. They no longer find ways to tolerate the heat and bear it, they instead turn on the air conditioning and do away with it altogether 100% (at least indoors), and there's not a lot of work required in that.
This is the thing too--this never would've happened if not for the fact that someone, somewhere, rather than falling for all of that "it builds character" bunch of horse turds, they said to themselves "it shouldn't have to be like this, there ought to be a way to have a big box blow cold air so my house isn't hot and actually feels good even in the summertime," and even with other people, I'm sure, telling him he was crazy, he would not be denied, and now it's a reality.
That's what I want for this--and nothing else (although all comments are welcome, especially "I can relate" comments, but even "come on man" comments--bring them on). I want a solution that ends this once and for all and isn't labor intensive. I am not interested in "developing character" or tolerance for frustration. I'm the type that wants an annoying situation resolved, not tolerated. Put it this way--years ago I lived in NC and thought it rained too much. I left NC for AZ because I was not interested in tolerating the rain, but there was no way to stop it, but I could move to the desert and not have to tolerate it anymore, and that's exactly what I did.
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