If I'd only known then ...

I've spent many hours (over the past couple of days) trying to clean up and reorganize my Mozilla Bookmarks into a useful format ... a task that might not have been necessary if I'd understood how they work in the first place. Sigh! Such is the story of my life. I jump into new experiences whole-heartedly with a little bit of knowledge and a lot of enthusiasm coupled with self-confidence to figure things out ... often creating messes to be cleaned up later.

I'm trying to become more mindful ... to simplify my life & let go of stuph ... but here I am accumulating Virtual Connections in my usual disorganized way ... then figuring out how to make sense of it all ... after the fact.

About two weeks ago when Kara encouraged me to explore the Blogosphere (with the intention of beginning a Blog of my own & let myself be known ... finally), I started with links (she emailed me) to sites she liked. When I discovered Blogs I wanted to revisit, I clicked Bookmark this Page. I explored links on those sites ... creating more Bookmarks along the way with the intention of revisiting them at my leisure.

In no time at all, the list grew to an unmanageable size ... and I could find nothing. So, when I created Small Reflections, I started a Link List of my own in the right column ... sorted alphabetically. Soon that grew to an unmanageable number so I separated them into categories ... and that helped initially, but I realized I was in trouble and needed to figure out how to manage my Bookmarks some other way when that list grew to a ridiculous size.

I culled the Link Lists at Small Reflections to a few I check regularly and kept the links to my Writers Retreat friends in a separate box, but didn't choose to lose track of other sites I'd found interesting ... so my Bookmarked list remained a chaotic mess (much like my desk often is for I'm an "out of sight, out of mind person" ... when something gets filed, it's forgotten entirely). Eventually I noticed Bookmarks could be Organized in a separate window ...(Duh!)... by creating categories in folders that could be alphabetically arranged. How could I have missed this?

So ... that's what I set out to do several days ago. I created a folder called Blogs to Check Out and another called Favorites. Later I added folders to sort more specifially (Journals, Spiritual Sites, Blogging Resources, Interesting Visuals, etc.) and began to "sort" by category. I made significant progress, but what I didn't realize until this morning is that I can create a new folder at the same time I Bookmark a site rather than after the fact by Organizing them later.

Again ... it's hard to fathom how I missed this feature on Mozilla ... but I did. Perhaps in my eager explorations, my focus landed on content rather than organization. Maybe I needed to create a mess and clean it up? It's possible, in my rush to make up for lost time, I just didn't stop to think at all? And, of course, I've been sick the past few days and my mind doesn't work right when my health is less than good. Enough excuses!

Whatever the cause ... I'm relieved to have figured out how things work ... finally. Now when I find a new site of interest, I know enough to file it where I can find it again easily ... creating new folders as needed on the spot. I'm still cleaning up the mess I made initially in Mozilla, but there's an end in sight and I've learned a valuable lesson ... again!

I'm slowing down ... mindfully attending to each moment ... trusting the process.