The Desk

I was 20 years old, and I fell in love.  Hard.  I was searching for a desk and went to a used office supply store.  There, I found THE DESK.  It was priced at $250, which was a lot of money for me, but which was a steal for this huge monster.  It was cherry wood, L shaped, with a hutch holding a light.  I knew I had to have it, but I wasn’t sure it would fit in my parent’s house.  My friend and I went home and measured.  It would fit.  Barely.

So we went back to the store, and the price had been raised to $400.  I almost cried!  Apparently they had heard me talking about what a bargain it was and decided to raise the price.  When I told them I was there to buy it, they gave me the original price.

We got it home, and my dad almost had a fit.  You see, we didn’t do a good job of measuring.  We lived in an old farmhouse with narrow doorways.  No way would it fit.

I don’t remember who came up with the idea of cutting it in half, but we got the saw out, and performed an alteration.  The desk fit into the house and upstairs, where my parents warned me it would be permanently installed.

I moved out and left the desk behind.  When I informed my parents I was moving to Arizona, they reminded me that the desk was never leaving.  When I got out here, I searched Craigslist for something like the magical desk, but I never found it.  Most people have heard of THE DESK at some point.

Then, several years later, my parents decided to move out here.  At first, they didn’t think they could bring my desk.  But my husband told them to disassemble it.  It’s real wood, and he believed he could re-assemble it.  He can reassemble almost everything.

Currently, it’s in pieces in my garage.  The desk made the trip, and we’ve been reunited.  Now all I have to do is clean out my office so that I have a space for it.  You see, the desk will need to be reassembled upstairs as it’s too big and heavy to carry intact.  In the process of organizing and cleaning up, I’ve made things worse.  Much worse.   Lucky for me, I actually like organizing.

I’m so glad my desk has come home.  🙂

*I don’t have a picture of the actual desk… yet.  It’s in pieces in my garage.

Goals

I’m a great goal-setter.  I’m not such a great goal-reacher.  My problem is that I get all excited about something and intend to go full speed ahead with it.  Then, real life intervenes, and I decide to start tomorrow, or I tell myself that I don’t have time or something came up.

The fact is that when something is a priority, it gets done.  Priorities take precedence over everything else.  Case in point: I go to work every day I’m scheduled.  It doesn’t matter if I’m feeling poorly or if I don’t want to or if I have other things on my to-do list.  I go every day.  So what happens to self-care?  What happens to writing?  How are the things that feed me spiritually and emotionally NOT priorities?

It’s hard making time for myself.  It’s easier to mope and complain that I don’t have time.  I have time if I really want to.  If a man without legs can climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, I can find time for the things that I say are important to me.  There is no such thing as can’t.

Part of goal-reaching, in my opinion, is cleaning out the clutter.  Back to the work example.  If I had 10 different jobs going on at once, I might not make it to all of them or I might not do a good job.  I’d sure be exhausted.  I think it’s the same thing with everything.  If I have too many writing projects going on or too much to do, I get distracted and do nothing at all.  I like having a simple life, but I’m as guilty as the next person of bringing more clutter into my life, physically (more stuff), emotionally, and spiritually.

Today, I’m working on cleaning out my office.  I’m trying to rearrange so I can find the things I need and get rid of much of the stuff I don’t, that I’ve been hanging onto for no reason.  After all, a clean office is easier to work in.  I still love chaos, and I’m not cleaning that out, but clutter and chaos are two very different things.

I read an article that I’m going to try to emulate.  It said to only keep things that you use or that bring happiness or beauty to your life.  Several candles bring beauty.  24?  I can probably put some away.  If I wouldn’t notice if someone threw it away, then it’s probably time to send it to charity.  I’m starting with my office, but I plan to work my way through the rest of the house and mentally clear out some clutter as well.

Where’s the major clutter in your life?