The Two Sides of Me

Okay, so I returned home from vacation to discover while I was gone, an electrical storm took out both my phone and my Internet (I have a Triple Play pack from my cable provider). No dialtone. No blog. No NY Times online. No nothing.

I was definitely a junkie needing technology detox. The cable company wasn't particularly interested in my tale of woe. So no, I didn't get it all back until a few minutes ago.

And what did I do while detoxing off the Internet? I cleaned my office. Or at least half of it. I can now look to my right and see the shelves of the Writer Chick I Want To Be. You know, the one with all her files neat, who can find a pen when she needs one, whose books all face spine out, neatly aligned.

I am not that Chick.

But for now, the right half of my office is that writer's office. The other half is in total disarray, worse than usual. That side belongs to the Writer Chick With A Demon Baby. The writer who drinks too much coffee, sleeps too little, and can never find a pen.

We all have those Two Side to us, don't you think? There's the Me Who Wants To Go To Yoga Class, and has her mat and yoga gear. Who breathes deep and lights candles. And there's the Me Who Cannot Escape the Demon Baby Long Enough to SHOWER, let alone take a yoga class.

There is the Me Who Has a Garden, and the Me Who Has Weeds.

But it's most obvious, this two-sided me, in my office right now.

So what two Me's live in You?

Putting My House in Order

On Thursday, Dad and Mom arrive. For a month. Now, this is generally a good thing. But my life, right now, is hell. I basically am going room to room, looking for anything and everything that might trip my father now that he is blind. And as I look at my family room--the room he spends 99% of his time when he is here--it is a veritable MINE field of baby toys, trikes, race cars and trains, with a few plastic cows (or "moos" as Baby calls them) scattered around "grazing" on the carpet for good measure. So much of it is going to have to go into the garage or into one of the kids' bedrooms.

Then there's my kitchen. At least once in the month, my father will tell me what a lousy housekeeper I am. More succinctly, that my kitchen is a mess. He will usually draw a direct correlation to illness, as if I am the Typhoid Mary of the 21st century. This is largely because I like to limit any time I spend in said kitchen. In fact, if it can't be put on a cookie sheet and baked from a frozen state to edible in a 400-degree oven, chances are I ain't making it. But since I can't feed my father pizza bagels, and since he won't likely be content with MY meals of steamed rice and veggies, I will have to contemplate cooking, which makes me shudder. So I spent the morning cleaning out every single kitchen cabinet, stacking plates neatly, organizing Tupperware (is it ME, or can you never find the LID for the container you need?), and so on.

Next will be my bedroom. Or, more specifically, "Dad's bedroom" for the month. I have to clean off every dresser and make sure nothing is lying about that he can trip on in the middle of the night.

You get the idea.

BUT . . . as much as this process drives me slightly nuts, it will be great to have them here for Thanksgiving. AND, the offshoot of this whole process is better writing. How, you may ask? Well, I have blogged before that chaos is okay in my book, but at some point, some line of demarcation, I find my creativity going downhill fast. As in, I am writing and things are good, but then the chaos becomes so consuming that it distracts me from the work at hand. Three loads of laundry waiting to be done is fine. But have it spilling from the laundry room into the hallway, and as tall as I am in the three-bin sorter (and for the record, I am five feet ten inches), and it ceases to be "okay" chaos and becomes a mental disaster for me. It's as if the laundry takes on a personality and it's screaming, "How can you sit with your a** in that chair and write when your son is down to his last pair of clean socks?"

So, as I sit here . . . I am feeling downright serene. This is going to be a good writing week. I can feel it.

And if it isn't, at least all my Tupperware will be in order.

Thoughts? Does clutter go to chaos in your house? Neat freak? Do tell.

All Right . . . You Didn't Believe Me

In response to the comments in the last post . . . here it is. EXACTLY as my desk looks today. You didn't believe me when I said it was messy. Well, I am not one to go "There . . . I showed you." But there . . . I showed you.

Note the overflowing trash can. The galleys. The overflowing basket of receipts. The roll of wrapping paper to the right that has been there six months. You get the idea.

Unedited. Unvarnished. The real deal.

My desk.

The Mess Inside My Brain

Here's a picture of my office. Lots of light. Lots of clutter on the shelves. And Buddha statues. I'll have to post a close-up. See the head to the right of the desk? And right now, I can't see my desk.
It happens. Often. I clean it off and out . . . and swear I will not let it reach critical mass again.

But it does.

I buy books on organizing. I read magazines on organizing. But what I really seem to need is someone to come in once a week and organize me. Which I really am not going to do. Because I am an intelligent woman and I should be able to handle this.

And today . . . in one of the endless magazine articles I read on decluttering . . . I had an epiphany. It's not my OFFICE that needs decluttering.

It's my mind.

I realize that when I am creating, I am messy about it. I have notebooks and computer files, I bop on the Internet, I stare out the window. I don't do it in a neat way. I don't use outlines. I use little clouds of ideas that I doodle on paper. And while I am creating, and in the process, as mail comes in or I find things in research, I toss it somewhere on my desk, knowing I'll find it later.
Then . . . then I reach this quantum physics collision of mess versus creativity, after which things are WAY TOO MESSY to create and I am distracted by mess. Usually by then, I am too busy or under a deadline, so I don't have TIME to tackle this now-massive project of decluttering or clearing off my desk. So I put it off. Until . . . like today, there is literally NOWHERE to put a mug of coffee or a glass of water. Then the trashbag comes into the office and I start.

So it's my MIND, not my clutter.

Which doesn't mean I see a way out of this. It's my process of creating and I don't want to screw with it.

Please tell me I am not alone.