Discombobulate is a fun, fancy word for “confuse.” If something has put you in a state where you don’t know up from down and you can’t spell your own name, you may be discombobulated. – vocabulary.com
It’s a condition housesitters are very familiar with and it comes as a result of being continuously unsettled and not having a regular place to live.
Common symptoms are:
– not knowing where your underwear is
– getting half way home before realising that you actually live in the opposite direction and are now on the way to the house you lived in three housesits ago
– being absolutely certain the pots were in the second drawer under the stove but eventually finding them on top of the oven (you’d be amazed where some people keep things, especially in the kitchen)
– an inability to remember what you have for breakfast even though you’ve had the same thing every morning for the past three months
Hopefully, you get the idea.
This week Danita and I moved into a new location – it’s not actually a new “new” location because we’ve been here a few times before but we’re finding we’re out of practice with relocating.
The thing is, until someone points it out or you have a clear experience of being discombobulated you don’t realise how unsettled you actually are.
And the problem with being discombobulated is that, by definition, you don’t see that you are in that state.
We moved from Chatswood to Dural this week.
It’s not far in distance but quite a long way in mindset.
In Chatswood, we’re in a small semi in the heart of town, just a few minutes walk from the railway station and the Chatswood retail kingdom.
Dural is semi-rural; 5 acre blocks, HUGE houses and there are even horses on the property we’re on.
There are NO shops in easy walking distance and the nearest railway station is a half hour drive away.
We love being out here but the upheaval has resulted in some confusion.
Things which we thought were habits have suddenly slipped by – see the comment about breakfast above.
I think Danita is coping much better than I am, or perhaps she’s just hiding it better.
Apparently, it takes 21 days to establish a habit.
Often, the length of a housesit is about 3 weeks – are you seeing a pattern here?
This phenomena of taking time to establish a habit is quite critical.
It’s quite amazing how much we do habitually.
How much do you think about getting dressed?
I don’t mean the daily (or more often for some) challenge of what to wear.
I’m talking about the actual process of putting clothes on.
(There’s a lot to be said about mindfulness and so being aware of how you are getting dressed may be a perfectly good form of meditation, but that’s a different conversation.)
It’s challenging enough getting dressed without having the additional complication of “what drawer did I put my clothes in, in this house?”
The other side of this is that it brings out your core drivers and behaviours.
When discombobulated you revert to your primal self and so what you do and say, can be very telling.
In the current house there’s a cup which Danita has seemingly adopted as her favourite.
Now I might be reading too much into this but I am a bit concerned about the message it’s presenting – see the photo.
This is also why holidays are so good – your normal set of habits, which are generally what gets you through the day, are broken down and you start to behave as you really are (dare I say, at your soul level) as opposed to the set of habits you’ve become.
So, “when push comes to shove” (can anyone tell me what that’s supposed to mean?) who are you?
What are your core drivers and behavioural patterns?
That’s not something to think about – it’s more about something to experience.
Try adding some chaos into your life and see what comes out – you could be delightfully surprised (or not).
And yes, “combobulated” is a real word (I knew you wanted to know that) meaning; “To put together in a somewhat mysterious manner. To bring something out of a state of confusion or disarray. To manufacture by some unusual or novel means.”
An example of its usage is, “right now I’d really like to combobulate my life.”
So, go forth and combobulate…