I’ve been told all my life that I would lose my head if it wasn’t screwed on. I used to get really offended by that, but now that I’m a little bit older, and a little bit wiser, I have found that that statement is completely true.
I am in my element when I have a list of things to do and reminders on my phone and laptop about things that need done in the future.
The problem is that I almost never take the time to write out stuff like that.
Take the other day for example.
We here at The Gannon Knight were putting together a Secret Santa for the people on the editorial board, so like you do, we pulled names from a hat and had plenty of time to buy our gifts.
Well, to make sure that I wouldn’t have to remember who I had, I wrote the name down in a document on my computer.
Problem solved right? Wrong.
When the time came for me to buy my gift, I had not only forgotten who I had for Secret Santa, but I had also forgotten where I had the name written down.
This led me on a wild goose chase trying to get in contact with my fellow editorial board members to figure out who everybody had and try to use the process of elimination to figure out who I had forgotten.
This whole situation could have been avoided if I had put the name somewhere I’d remember, and I could have had a lot more fun with the Secret Santa
However, I was too busy stressing about whether or not my Sherlock Holmes skills were up to the task of making sure that I didn’t accidentally leave anyone out.
The one thing that I am getting a lot better at is remembering when I have to dress up for specific classes.
In high school, I was notorious for forgetting when I needed to wear our school paper’s shirt on distribution day.
Every time an issue of the paper came out we had to wear our custom-made T-shirts during lunch while we passed out the papers.
The amount of times I had to borrow someone else’s has to go into the double digits, and I never learned.
I always knew I could find a shirt so it wasn’t an issue.
I’m going to gloss over the fact that most of the time the people who had extra shirts were girls, and they were always two sizes too small.
I didn’t care though; as long as my grade wasn’t dropped, I would wear a crop top and short shorts.
Fast forward to college, and now dressing up for certain classes on certain days is worth more points than I’d care to lose over not dressing up.
You only forget to dress up once before you decide not to do it again.
Granted, most people didn’t forget the first time, but that’s beside the point.
I’m not talking about them, I’m talking about me.
I need to take steps toward making sure I don’t forget what to wear, and those include, but are not limited to, Post-it notes, reminders on my phone, Alexa reminders and Google Calendar reminders.
You may say that all of those are overkill, but I say they are necessary.
The less that I have to keep in my brain the better, because most of the time, my head is in the clouds.
If I’m able to get stuff down on something tangible, I’m set for the day.
The problem becomes when I forget to put stuff into my various means of reminders.
But I’m getting better at that, and someday, I’m going to be so good at it, I’m not going to forget to do anything.
OK, maybe that’s a stretch, but I am trying.

BENJAMIN HAYLETT
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