The Constant Struggle

Let me go on and admit it. I have recurrent fantasies of keeping an orderly, austere work space like something out of Real Simple magazine. Chalk it up to me being a Virgo, but I often sit at my desk giving sidelong glances to piles as if to warn them: "You're next!" and I truly wish I could surrender to my urge to indiscriminately toss stuff. Sadly, friends, this is not me. I've spent too much time writing down my words and collecting those of others. My altruistic aim is to string these ideas together like little beads of light and, in one way or another, share them like a devotee of Sophia, I suppose.

And so, I horde. (Sigh and weary smile.)

To my credit, since moving in to this new space I've tossed and shredded God knows how many pounds of paper. But it doesn't take long though for a flood of new paper to replace the paper I have heroically banished from my space. The mail man and my own compulsion aid in the conquest and get the better of my Real Simple fantasy. Still, as Jesse Jackson used to say, I am keeping hope alive!

Today was fairly productive. Though I have not yet done the laundry or cooked a quick meal for the week, what I have done is added to a piece of creative nonfiction that I'm writing about my grandmother and weeded through some of the paper I have crammed in binders, filling up journals and the like. In the midst of it, I began thinking: what better place than a blog to serve as home to some of these thoughts? And so you should expect to see periodic posts from this archive, beginning today.

Paper dragon, I may indeed slay you!