Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Funkytown

Now that life is slowing down in the world of academia (thank the everliving Gods, because I am ready to drive all these students home myself), I finally have the time to turn my attention to the disaster formerly known as my office.

For eight months of the year my office is my fortress; my bunker in times of trouble. It is filled with books, scores, CDs, and enough paper to make a Redwood forest weep. Because my humble workspace is roughly the size of a closet, stacking is the name of the game. I am the Queen of precarious piles, and am able to build CD towers so tall that the Brady Bunch would throw their playing cards in the trash can and buy me BOTH the sewing machine and the rowboat.

But now that it's the merry month of May, it's time to TEAR DOWN THOSE WALLS.

For the past several days I've been engaged in an archeological excavation of my office. Large piles of papers have undergone a magical metamorphosis. Once bitter and full of work-related nastiness they have now aged and turned into a delectable pile of scrap, perfect for recycling. It's a beautiful thing.

Piles of other materials have also been moved out of my office with relative speed and ease, and right now -- comparatively speaking, mind you -- this place is looking good.

But I'm nowhere near done, and that's the problem. Everywhere I look I see what's left (believe me, it's ALOT), and to me, it's all cloud and no silver lining. Now there are piles of problems. Problems too complicated, problems too time-consuming, and problems just too ... problematic. They are all smashed in bookcases and on booktrucks staring at me; waiting for me to make the first move. It's not pretty.

And then
*sigh*
I go home.

Home is my cloudy office multiplied by a bazillion.

What happened? I started out with great promise in January. I was pitching, dumping, donating, cleaning and making real progress. Today? Let's just say I used to watch Clean Sweep so I could feel good about myself when compared to the slovenliness of others. But people who live in filthy glass houses shouldn't throw dirty socks.

So I'm trying to motivate myself to do, well, anything that would improve my current domestic situation. Because of the enormity of the task at hand, I am unsurprised to report that this week I am 0-for-4. This is actually worse than it seems because although I've done zero housework, I continue to cook food and wear clothing, thereby creating more dirty dishes and piles of laundry.

The worst part of all is I am 4-for-4 this week in feeling sorry for myself.
This needs to stop.

I'm tired of Funkytown.

3 comments:

mensch71 said...

I resemble those remarks. Just follow the sound of my voice.... I'm behind the ginormous pile of laundry.

Gary said...

It's very hard to see past those piles (figuratively speaking)for sure, but you just have to take one day at a time - just pick one task and get it done. Don't look at the other rooms! Also, if in doubt, throw it out!

I recently had to move desks here at work and was shocked to find what old crap was hidden in the back of my cabinets. Timesheet copies from 1986? Check. BIOS chip from an ORIGINAL IBM PC? (c. 1984) Check. So I did a huge purge and found that I really had very little paper left that I really needed. And it felt great besides!

hazela said...

I laughed out loud...so been there sugar, my solution was to marry a neat freak and have to recant my ways (somewhat)...so my guiltly pleasure is leaving the dishes on the sink and leave my clothes on the floor when he goes out of town...my biggest fear is that one day he's going to come home early and find me in bed with eating a cold slice of crumbley pizza...sod infidelity, this would be much worse.