Yes, those are my feet up there. No, it didn't happen in middle school. I was a junior in high school when I showed up one day with two mismatched shoes on my feet. I've never been the most fashion-forward student but I think that was a new low for me. I didn't really mind it, though. In fact, I thought it was absolutely hilarious, which is why I took the picture and later posted it on Twitter.
I'm a serial sock mismatcher, although I'm pretty sure that's the only time I've shown up in a public place unintentionally with two different shoes on and, in my defense, they are at least a little similar. I always start out the summer with my socks all paired but every year around fall or winter, I eventually give up and fall back into my old habits.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. Whether eaten by my closet, the washer or just lost somewhere in the abyss that apparently exists in my room, I can never seem to find matching socks when I need them. So, I have to settle for mismatched ones. I may be disorganized but if you ask me where I last left my binder from eighth grade, I can tell you it's upstairs in the closet behind the game of Snorta that none of us have played in at least three years.
It's a skill called the disorganized organization. Everything I have may or may not be disorganized and I may not ever find the things I need, but I do know where very random, obscure things from my childhood are located. No one, including me, will ever need them, but I know where they are. Everything may look like a mess, but really it's disorganized in such a specific way that I know where everything is.
Being in a dorm this year has forced me to control my disorganized organization because now I'm in a much smaller area and I share that area with my roommate, who I don't think would appreciate this particular art form very much. However, there are still parts of this that remain prevalent in my life. Take, for example, the laptop I'm typing on at this very moment. I don't think I've organized the files on here or on my Google Drive since I got this computer, outside of what I had to organize for work.
In the case of Google Drive, I don't think I've organized it anytime in the last six years at least. That's why when I can't remember the name of a specific file, and I just start scrolling through the pictures and documents, I easily find the Spiderman meme I saved two years ago but not the resume I just spent hours working on. Then there's my backpack, which I've just accepted as some sort of Mary Poppins style abyss that I can never find anything in.
Does my disorganized organization make my life more difficult? Probably. It'd probably be a lot easier to just put my files in folders and delete the ones that are almost a decade old at this point, but I probably never well. In college, I've made some effort to control my disorganized organization, but I think it's a part of me now. I've learned how to live with it. My room may be organized, sometimes certain files are right where I want them, but I think my disorganized organization will always be a part of me, for better or for worse.
