Ouellette vs. Covey

I blame all my memory problems on Franklin Covey.

This evening as I type on my keyboard I have two notes written on the palm of my hand in black ink. Both are faded so much that you cannot tell what they originally said (and I have to think very hard to remember).

How did I get this way? How did my mind (a young mind) become so muddled and cluttered with stuff that everything I have scheduled in my life has to be recorded? Sometimes even the most basic of things.

Currently, I have been avoiding a wonderful co-worker. She is very sweet and awfully nice but she is waiting on me to return a camera that I checked out over the summer to take to a workshop. Everyday when she sees me her eyes tell the whole story. I get this look as if she is hoping against hope that I will have brought the camera back.

Everyday I try to smile (I try to avoid her if I see her before she sees me) and secretly grimace inside because I have forgotten the camera again! It has now been five weeks, thirty-five days, and eight hundred forty hours (Not counting the weekends due to the fact that I couldn’t possibly return the camera at that time anyway).

What brought all of this on?

Yesterday I left an office at the church unlocked so that I could get in and work on a program this evening for an upcoming wedding. Did I remember? Of course I didn’t…it wasn’t like it was written in my covey.

I left work quickly to get to the grocery store, picked up the boys, and hurried home to beat the rain and maximize my relaxation time. It was only in the middle of eating dinner that I happened to glance over at the empty place setting and see the unfinished product I had left myself. I could not believe how easily the task had left my mind.

So…I have come to the conclusion that it is not my fault. In case you haven’t heard, nothing is your fault. At least that is what my sixth graders think, especially the one who forgot his medication yesterday and even turned out a few ‘tears’ because he couldn’t ‘help it’.

If I had no Franklin Covey, no paper to write down notes and scheduled meetings, I would be forced to remember all of them on my own. My mind would be forced to remember or suffer the consequences (Just like the kid I sent to the office regardless of being medicated or not).

It is because of the ‘Ease of Covey’ that mind does not have to work nearly as hard as it could have in another time period. Because of this, my mind is mush. My memory is shot. My schedule remains a frantic rat race. I have joined the many addicted ‘pushers’ of society and have become a ‘covey junkie’.