I don’t know why, but someone sometime decreed that ‘disorganised and messy’ is bad. I bet it was the same person who declared that late is bad. Well I reckon late people are lovable – otherwise why would all the early people spend so much time waiting for them eh? And messy, disorganised people are lovable too. In fact, now I come to think of it, almost all (there’s one exception) the most intelligent, creative, fascinating people I know are messy and disorganised. And late.
This being the case, why oh why did I decide it would be a good thing to bring some order into my office/studio today?
There I was, sitting happily amongst the mess when I was suddenly hit by a stupid urge to ORGANISE. (I have to confess there was an ulterior motive … I’d lost something, you see, and I thought if I was going to rummage through all my piles of stuff, I might as well clear up a bit.)
Well, I started by putting things in folders and labelling boxes and moving them from my ‘work’ area onto shelves. After about an hour a semblance of order was emerging and I was starting to feel rather proud of myself, and thinking I should take a photo to show to the organised people. I put another folder on the top shelf and then ……… AAAGHHH@#%*&¿! The whole lot came tumbling down with a stupendous crash which brought my husband and son running.
“Are you alright?” they yelled in unison. I was strangely calm, so I didn’t scream, “WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE, YOU IDIOTS!”
Three heavy 5 feet long shelves, complete with boxes, had cascaded their contents over the entire floor. It’s a wonder I wasn’t buried. Nobody can say my reflexes are getting slow … I’d managed to leap back more or less out of the way, sustaining only minor bruising from one of the shelves as I tried to impede its path to the floor (a suicidal tendency I must try to curb).
That hour of meditation I’ve been doing every day for 6 months must be starting to have an effect because, though I might have THOUGHT swear words, I didn’t actually say them out loud.
Satisfied that I was OK, my husband began to inspect the wall which used to support the shelving. “Ah,” he said, “I THOUGHT those screws might be too small.” He shouldn’t have told me that really, because it revealed that the incident could have been avoided if he’d used the right size screws.
I said not a word. What was done could not be undone (my word, what a serene person I am becoming!).
Three hours later the shelves were fixed and I’d cleaned up the mess, thrown out a lot of that stuff you wonder why you kept in the first place, and actually had a little space on the shelves and tables.
I didn’t really feel all that pleased. I knew it would take me only a couple of days at most to mess it up again, and this wasn’t how I’d intended to spend the day. What if I died tomorrow? I’d hate to have spent my last day organising my work area TWICE.
I hadn’t even found the lost object. It’s probably on the office side of my room, but I’ve learned my lesson. No more tidying EVER (I’ll pray to St Anthony instead).
From now on I’ll not incur the wrath of the inanimate objects in my environment. I’ll be content with being a lovable messy person.
I’m not going to try to be EARLY any more either.
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