Spanish to English Other Other

Hi, the phrase occurs in a spoken response from a Dominican Republic informant, who is asked what progress means to him:

“En lenguaje así del de uno, sería no estar desbaratado, en la olla, pues”

I get the idea of being disorganised, 'broken', in a state... but I can't come up with a suitably colloquial turn of phrase to convey the idea (target language is international English, so shouldn't be particularly country specific, if possible!). And if anyone has a different take on what it means in this country, that would also be helpful :)

thanks in advance