Lesson 14: Organize

Building on last episode’s theme, A Lingering Pain, this lesson explores what it means to organize the mind — to confront the clutter of memories, emotions, and unresolved experiences that shape who we are.

Through powerful storytelling and vivid metaphor, The TimeSmith describes descending through the “floors” of the mind — each one filled with old projects, fears, and forgotten memories — and learning how to bring order to the chaos. From gang life and trauma to rebuilding through faith and prayer, this episode reveals what it looks like to turn pain into structure, and disorder into peace.

If your thoughts ever feel overwhelming or you’ve struggled to find clarity in your past, this episode offers perspective, hope, and a gentle reminder:

“You don’t have to stay stuck in your head. You can organize what’s within you — one memory at a time.”

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

Have you ever been lost in your thoughts? Randomness. A thought pops into your head, and you don't know where it came from. Many times in your past, things that have happened that have not let you go. Why have they done that? Let's talk about that. Hi, I'm the Times Smith, and welcome back. I hope you had time to listen to the last lesson, A Lingering Pain. That's gonna be somewhat of the theme here. Constantly going back and checking. Not to revisit pain, but to see exactly where we're at today. Are we overcoming it? Are we doing better? Well, you tell me, how are you doing today? And I hope you're doing fine. Well today, how about we step into the forge? I'd like to share something with you. When we come into the forge, we see the counter right in front of us, the layout with the elevator to the left, and a staircase to the right, the flooring, the walls, even lamps on those walls. But how did we get here? In fact, how did I get here? I've talked about the mess in our head. And today I want to talk about organizing. Organizing those thoughts. How are you doing with that? Is your mind a clutter? How exactly do you get to what you need to do next? What's the priority? Life is filled with the realistic situations that we deal with. For some it could be marriage and children. For others, it could be living this abuse now. You might be waking up by parents yelling. You could be waking up of the nightmares of the past. But how do we get to a point about what we need to do first? In my opinion, what needs to be done is cleaning. Not sure how many of you guys are into projects or building. Again, as I've said it, I am a welder. It involves a lot of planning, ordering material, having it delivered, washing it, cutting it, and beginning to weld. Not to mention that I also have to set time aside and sit at my desk and begin to draw these designs, the layout, the blueprinting. Well then I go into the shop, and the shop is a mess. There could be remnants of old projects on the ground. The tables are scattered and what seemed to work for the last project won't be a good starting point for the new project. Let's take a step down and not necessarily walk into any memory. But let's walk past some of these rooms. Let's go down. Grab the handrail and take it slow. When we get to the first floor, I always envision that this room is well lit up. This first floor wasn't always just the first floor. In fact, everything in this room used to just be in one room. Well, once it began to evolve and to grow, it actually made it all into a filing cabinet where it wasn't memories, it wasn't pictures, it was just thoughts. And it felt easy because a memory would come and it would go and I would file it. Well, that filing cabinet ended up becoming a hallway and a room. Why is that? Well, because I began to dig into these memories. I just didn't want to know about what happened with a friend. I didn't want to just go into a memory of a child when I thought of my brothers or my sister. I would think to myself a little bit deeper and try to remember what that day was like. What was I wearing? Do I remember the smells of that day? That could be my creative side. One thing I make sure I don't do is to make stuff up. I don't add anything to the memory except what I remember. Well, I have gotten to a point that I would say, in memories, I have a good memory. For most people, they would say, Well, I can't remember what I ate yesterday, or where I left my keys. I'm a culprit of that as well. But for some reason I do remember moments, and I remember them deeply. If they affected me positively, or if they affected me negatively. But prior to that, they were just thoughts. Tommy was murdered at the age of nine. He was shot. And I think to myself that that's not his whole memory. But the thought comes to me in just that sentence, and it was easy to file into a cabinet until I was ready to deal with it. Many things get put into the backlog, and they never come up to say let's deal with this today. Well, if you've ever lost somebody, as I've explained in my first episode in the first season, you would see that there's a memory that's deep to me, important to me, and life-changing. Whether we apply that mindset to the memories, it all becomes a part of us. It all is life-changing. It affects us in a way that it roots itself into our characteristic. Yes, I am overcomplicated. That's easy to see. I cannot just let a memory be a memory. Well, I decided to construct these rooms and hallways, and yes, I will talk about my friend Tommy soon enough. It's all important. It's not just lessons, it's a part of me. Remember that this is about me sharing, sharing about who I am and what made me what I am today. The Timesmith. I look into these memories as if they're happening today. If that happened to me today and I lost a friend today, I'd be devastated. But devastation consumes us, and we miss what's trying to happen and what's trying to be explained to us. Well it's not just devastation in these memories. Sometimes it's joy. Sometimes it's peace. And those things overshadow the whole moment. Is there anything greater than peace and joy? Probably not. But there's many lessons to be learned, and I had to begin to organize. So one by one, these rooms came about, out of the filing cabinet and into a room. Why don't we go back to the staircase? And let's go down another floor. Watch your step. You know, the lower I go down, the darker it seems to get. Maybe I need to adjust the lighting in here. But let's go down one more floor. And we see the the third floor, just a little bit darker. When I used to come down here to store things, I would come down here with a little bit of fear because it became a little bit more difficult to resolve these issues. These became a little more rooted, and my life was being built off these uncertainties. They're not all lies that people build their life on, but people do build their life blindly. Now let me bring this back to myself. I built my life blindly. These things that I have experienced in my life did a few things to me. And when I wasn't uh certain about what exactly was happening to me, I became angry and I became sad. Well, when your anger gets to a point that it's boiling, that's called violence. Down here on the third floor, you see a lot of what my life was when I was a gangster. Violence. Wanting to hate, needing to hate. But that's not who I was. As I walk down these halls, I do see the memories of the things that were done to us and the things that we did to others. Gang life, retaliation, hatred, fighting, putting ourselves in the world and expecting ourselves to survive. Even if you haven't been in a gang, hatred doesn't discriminate just to gangsters. Hatred will get into everything. My point is that there was a lot of uncertainty in here. That's the reason for the darkness. Is that the more issues I resolve in here, it's like a light bulb. And in front of the rooms, there's a light right above the door. And in this hallway, what I see is a light on, a couple lights off, a couple lights on, and so on and so forth. How long does this hallway go? Well, that's what I'm trying to explain. Is that this is how I've organized it. Well, let's go back to the stairway and let's go down. Well, the deeper we go, I think this is where it becomes dangerous for people. Is that they begin to get stuck, is that they find a memory and they have nowhere to place it, and they place it so deep, and then they want to resolve that one issue. I've talked about sexual abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse. Haven't entirely gotten into substance abuse, mental abuse. But what ends up happening is that we place these deep thoughts that were in a filing cabinet, we decide that we want to resolve them, and now it's just us and that memory without anyone knowing that we're dealing with something. Let's go back up. But let's take the elevator. Like, let's get out of here quickly. Well, here we are, back at the forge. I will say this is that if you spend too much time in your head, you can get stuck. You can get stuck on a thought or a trauma. What I wanted you to see is that not everything is lit up and not everything is resolved, but I've taken a chance on organizing what was once just mere thoughts and decided to approach my life to resolve issues. Why? Because I know that I'm capable. I know that if I put some thought, if I put some prayer to it, if I do some research and read a book, I might be able to find the answer to that thing that ails me. Well I can go on and on about memories, and as long as this podcast continues, I will. I will share the lessons of the smallest of things. Yes, even the first lesson was about my friend and I jumping on ramps, and it changed my life. You might see it as insignificant of something that you've been through, you might see it as resolved, and that's fine. This isn't really for people to go and say, open up a part of you that has never been open. No, I'm talking about the mess in your head and how we file it and why you're still thinking about it. I'm sharing the part of me of what I still think about, and guess what I think about? All of it. Every memory. The countless times I've heard someone tell me, Timesmith, that's exhausting. Why do you do that to yourself? It's who I am. It's what I've done since a child. I think from the moment that I gained my consciousness in the sexual abuse moment, I began to pay attention. I began to pay attention to the thoughts that I was having. I began to see that there is something that was bothering me, that there were memories that kept popping up, and it wasn't just good enough to keep them in a folder, in a filing cabinet. It bothered me too much. It changed who I was. What did those thoughts look like? And what were the facial expressions on my face? Well, I can tell you that I laughed a lot. There was times that you get stuck looking into nothing, staring at a wall. You don't want to be stuck in your head. Many times that's why I have this approach where we go down and we come up. Because it could be you that's still stuck in your head. It could be you still stuck in a memory, still stuck in a thought. If you're stuck in a memory and you're trying to change that, opposed to coming to peace with it, that is not only punishing yourself, but your suffering. This life is not intended for us to suffer. That is a part that evil plays a role in ruining our life. The good parts about this life are about enjoying it, about laughing, about looking up, being outside. So for those who have spent time in their head, and you have this intensity to have to resolve, organize it. Take the time to plan it, take the time to see which one is actually bothering you the most. Yes, for me, it was that one moment that bothered me, and there's days that it comes back, and my mind is consumed with it, wondering if I could have done something. But when I get out of that memory and I close that door, my attitude is thank you, Lord, that that's not happening today. Thank you that I survived that moment. Thank you that I can do something with it. Appreciation. So I hope you can organize your thoughts. I hope you could place them in the correct priority that they need to be placed in. And if it's resolved, just close the door. You don't have to do what I'm doing. What I'm doing is trying to reach people. I'm trying to help people resolve their problems. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a psychologist. I'm a man who dug in, saw that most of the help that was offered wasn't for me. So now here's a new route. I hope it helps you. So remember, if you feel unloved, you are loved by me. And if you are lost, you can be found. I am a Timesmith. God bless.