how do you organize your life?

help, i'm a mess

“Ooh, I don’t know about this shoulder…WOW,” said the man administering my once-monthly “massage club” massage yesterday at a place called “The Now” which is semi-ironic since all I do when I am there is stress over the future while a kind gentleman named Gerry attempts to knead out five decades of neurosis and five months of acute stress. I won’t bore you with the details (OK, just a few: Gerry thinks there’s calcification (?) in my shoulder, he thinks it’s affecting circulation to my hand, he believes it might be a posture problem, he’s suggesting I type less (lol) and if not, physical therapy/surgery/maybe a standing desk?).

Gerry is nice and his hands are mean and that is exactly what I need — pop pop pop goes my shoulder and whirr whirr whirr goes my brain and here is my $80 plus tip that I should probably be investing in index funds but instead am investing in temporary relief until such time that I can deal with the real-time fossilization of my alive bursa or whatever it is?

hell central/my desk

Here is a thing I know in my (literal) bones: I am at capacity. And a big reason I am at capacity is because I do not now — and have never known— how to organize my life. I am not an inbox zero person (at last count I was inbox 47,842). Systems intimidate or overwhelm my ill-formed pinball machine of a brain. Usually this is fine. My creative “methods” (two laptops open at at all times with 4,000 tabs across each/to-do lists on the back of the gas bill envelope/ a couple of Post-Its thrown on top as reminders of the most important tasks and IF IT IS TRULY URGENT jotting things down on my hand) get me through my life OK.

But right now? Right now I’m navigating professional chaos [chaos I’m excited about! 🤡🤡🤡PRE-ORDER AMBITION MONSTER NOW 🤡🤡🤡] in addition to all my normal jobs: the kids’ dentist/the eye doctor —oops broke my glasses again, Mom!— the summer camp payment/the thing that is hanging off my car/special geriatric cat food /the new high-school admission paperwork — Ms. Romolini, we need your child’s ORIGINAL birth certificate not this one that looks like it was photocopied from a ‘zine). Let’s just say the center on this particular life admin jalopy does not hold.

So, my question, if I am allowed to ask such a question: How do you organize your life? What (preferably easy, intuitive systems) do you use? Is it too late for me? Did I need to plan for this moment when I was 32/still had brain that wasn’t menopausally smooth? DEAR NEW SUBSTACK READERS, HELP.

PS. We had a extremely good Everything Is Fine conversation this week with genius podcaster and journalist Jane Marie. It’s all about her book about the deep scam of MLMs but also about getting older and running your own business and how to interview people (a skill Jane says she learned, in part, from Ira Glass at This American Life) and many more lovely and true things.

PPS. REMINDER: I am legally obliged under penalty of death to tell you to pre-order my book Ambition Monster everywhere I go until June. It is, I’m told, a good book.