Well Hello There

Hello blog.  I haven't forgotten you.  I have thought about you.  But alas I seem to have a problem making that transition from intention to execution.  I hereby announce that I intend to work on this very problem, even I just type drivel until I get my blogging legs back.

So here I am.

In between writing my last two posts I was working on redoing two closets in the new house, transforming them from the standard single pole, single shelf  basic builder's closet into something more useful.  I redid the guest closet and got piles of boxes off the guest room closet floor, and turning the guest room into a comforting and welcome place just a day before my step son and his wife arrived for a week.  Don't worry the guest room is still nice.  I am intentionally not turning it into a storage center but keeping it as a guest room.  We will have house guests again in a little over a week, and I look forward to many more visits from family and, hopefully, friends in the future.  

The closet shown above is actually in my office, which can also double as an extra guest room should the need arise, although it has less available space for the guests to actually unpack.  You can see my new purple purse on the shelf a little to the left of the basket drawers.

It tickled my fancy that I happened to be installing the closets just as I was reading Eric Abrahamson's book, A Perfect Mess.  Truthfully I had already ordered the closet materials when I picked up the book, and although I am a firm believer in organization, I am not one who thinks that everything should be neat and tidy.  Well, truthfully sometimes I walk a fine line.  I do like things put away neatly.  And I admit that all my spices are in identical jars, neatly labeled, although I don't particularly worry about the labels being neatly lined up.  I like spontenaity.  I've learned that a bit of mess is more productive than a sterile environment but at the same time, I tend to think that if the underlying architecture of a system, whatever it is, has some structure to it, some organization, then everything can go crazy for a while without the whole system falling apart.  I've also learned that worrying about doing everything and organizing everything and scheduling everything is just another face of fear, a way to close a door, a way to justify not tackling some particular challenge for fear of losing or getting hurt, a way of building walls.

Or that is what I tell myself.  I am sure this is just another one of my personal myths,  the stories that we as humans tell ourselves to get through our days.  But I'm not quite ready to give up my personal myths yet.  

Anyway the book is good.  It is interesting.  It is not going to tell you how to organize your life.  Nor is it going to tell you that total disorganization is the greatest things since sliced bread.  Abrahamson might say that disorganization may be more efficient than hyperorganization, but then again it may not.  Either way it is an interesting read and lead this reader to think about when organization has worked and when it has failed, sometimes in interesting and spectacular ways.

Otherwise, since all that building and fretting I wrote about before I have been busy entertaining, and recovering from sinuses or a cold or a whatever-it-may-be-dragginess-congestion-and-intermittent-fever thing.   I would sit down with G to watch the Olympics only to wake him from a deep slumber and bring his caregiver running in from the next room when I would fall asleep and my head would fall back against the wall with a resounding thud. 

I am better now.  And I am more determined to try to pick up the little threads of my interests and activites and knit them into something more coherent.