Doctor Who Marathon on BBC America Today: or Didn't I Record These Already?

or It Pays To Keep A Detailed Log of Everything You Do!

It may seem a little off-topic to be writing about the Doctor Who marathon on BBC America today, but it's really not.

You can turn any of your interests, and any event that happens to you, into a blog post, a memoir for a magazine article, or just use it as an exercise in writing.

In the 1980s, whenever there was a Doctor Who Marathon, it would feature the 4th Doctor, my Doctor, the one I grew up with: Tom Baker.

Today's marathon features Matt Smith, and I have to admit I never watched his episodes before - and I'm not watching them now, I've got too much work to do. But I am DVD-R-ing them.

And I'm doing this even though I think that I actually did DVD-R them before, when they were shown in their normal times slot on BBC America last year, but I never watched them then either. A combination of not having time or being in the mood.

Because I'm so busy, I typically watch TV shows I know I'm going to like - because  I work in front of my TV. I concentrate on my writing, looking up at the TV only when my favorite parts of a particular episode are on, and since I know the shows by heart I know when to do that!

But if you were to ask me - okay, where are all these Doctor Who shows you supposedly DVD-R-ed, I couldn't tell you.

And you see...this is the value of serendipity.

Originally this blog post was just going to be a paean to Doctor Who,  a ground-breaking series that holds a special place in my heart for reasons I won't go into now, but as I wrote the direction of the post changed - that happens sometimes.

Now it's a post about Organization and Keeping Track of Your Belongings/Collections.

If you're not organized, you really need to be. Otherwise you can waste time and money (albeit perhaps not a lot of it, DVD-Rs aren't that expensive) duplicating effort you've already done.

Money may not be that precious (you can always earn more), but time definitely is.

Let me repeat that: Time is precious, and you shouldn't waste any of it unnecessarily.

So when you pack away some of your belongings, either by necessity or just because you're cleaning house, make sure you make a note of everything you pack away and where you've packed it away, and keep those detailed notes in an easily accessible notebook so you always know where to go to find out what you've put away and where you've put them!

Trusting in your memory, especially after a year or two of "out of sight, out of mind," just doesn't work.

The same thing holds true for your writing. Presumably you write everything on your computer, but do you have all your files properly named so you can find them easily? You may depend on your Search function on the computer to be able to find any file, but sometimes that Search function can go wonky, or you may not remember what you named the file, if you don't give them sensible, identifiable names but rather whimsical ones.

So, go, enjoy The Doctor Who marathon. And remember - the best Doctors were Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. These new guys, pshaw!