Organizational Skills

April 29, 2024

My funny black and white cartoon of an opossum stopping by and asking to be a roommate. Drawn by artist Bryan Skinnell.

I admire organized people.

I honestly don’t know how they do it. Anyone with an ounce of organizational skills truly amazes me. It’s like watching the second coming of Jesus when I see people clean and tidy anything. I’d love to be able to do that and I’m eager to learn some tips. Seems like putting stuff away after I’m through with it is the simplest concept to master. It’s so gosh-darn simple that even those of us with stale potato chips for brains could surely get the hang of it. But I never could despite my best attempts and I’m not really sure why. When it comes to organizing anything I can turn a Martha Stewart spread into a royal mess no matter how many saints intervene. MY own abilities at staying on the ball probably rivals those of opossums in their efforts at staying off the road. My own residence looks like it has been taken over by a pack of organizationally challenged opossums who got tired of playing on the road and decided to come over and camp out at my place. Like me, they aren’t worth a darn either. Opossums won’t help you clean or do any work around the house. All they do is hog the TV and criticize my choice of potato chips and other snacks I got lying around. You can’t please the buggers no matter what you do. And when you fuss at them they ignore you by playing dead which strikes me as pretty rude, even by opossum standards.

I think I’ll take a cue and play dead myself. I can tell already that it’s gonna be a long week.

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Why hello there! My name is Bryan Skinnell and I am a middle-aged (50-ish) artist and neighborhood kook who is living the artistic and creative life out in the boonies of Bedford, Virginia. Bedford is one of the largest counties in the commonwealth of Virginia and, for the most part, it’s still a mostly rural one that bridges the gap between Roanoke and Lynchburg. You could say, in more ways than one, that Bedford is the heart of Virginia. I can’t argue with that although I usually think of Bedford more as Virginia’s belly button myself.

I grew up right here in Bedford and have lived and toiled most of my life on our infamous red clay. The sort of clay that makes the stickiest mud known to man after a rain and which clings like super glue from God to anything and everything it touches. If you are so foolish as to get it on yourself you’ll wind up tracking and leaving a trail of red goop everywhere you go for days afterwards to the delight of your family and friends. But I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else and Lord knows I tried as I’ve wandered from one end of the country to the other. But Bedford has my heart and that’s where I’ve chosen to live my life today. In my free time when I’m not stuck in my studio making art I do love being outside gardening or hiking or just pestering the neighbors.

Every day I try to write something that’s original, entertaining, and half-way thoughtful here on my blog while sharing my happy-go-lucky attitude and zest for life. Quite often I don’t have the foggiest notion of what I’ll end up saying in a post. But, whatever I end up writing about, I do hope you enjoy it!

I do keep a mailing list for interested readers and fans. If you would like to get in on the action and follow my musings and rabble-babble, that can be easily arranged. Just give me an email address that you would like for me to send my blog posts to and I’ll see that you get it.

Thanks for stopping by!
Bryan Skinnell