Two weeks ago, I brought all the contents of my work office home. It's amazing how much one collects at an office. I left it boxed up while I assessed what my new office might hold. Last week-end, I had no time to get organized. So, I entered the week-end with hopes of making some decisions.
Saturday was a day of creativity: the obvious creativity of making pizza dough and pizzas and the less obvious creativity of rearranging bookcases and putting away books.
I have no bookcases at my new office, and I've decided not to move too many of my books to the office. Thus, my dilemma; my home bookcases appeared to be completely full. But I realized that one of them was full of partially full office supplies and notebooks. Other shelves looked full, but they were holding things like old t-shirts and things that could be stored elsewhere.
So, to simplify an 8 hour process: I reorganized, and now all the volumes of poems that I have collected are in one bookcase, at home now (once they were at the office), in the front bedroom where I write the most often.
Along the way, there were delightful discoveries. I came across 2 notebooks: 3 ring binders where I used to put all the pages of poems that didn't quite make it and ideas for poems that never crystallized. I took one, and my spouse took another--these are pages from the late 90's, mind you. My spouse started writing: a line here, a fragment there. He came up with an interesting poem out of my fragments.
At some point I should just throw out this material. I've always said that generating ideas is not a problem I have--and in fact, if I never had another idea, I'd have to live to be 247 years old just to explore all the ideas I have right now--and that's just the ones I've written down.
I came across all sorts of notes that I've written on retreats and synod assemblies. I tore them out of various notepads, and I'll keep them in a 3 ring binder so that I can find them easily. I've got ideas for several retreats that I could pull together. I'm glad that I found these notes.
It's good to feel a bit more organized, although I still don't really have room for all these books. Still, they'll be easier to sort once they're out of boxes. I knew that if I left them in boxes for too many more weeks that they'd still be there months or years from now.
On Sunday, I enjoyed more cooking creativity: more on that if the recipe I created turns out to be delicious at lunch today. I did some sketching at church:
I wouldn't want to have this kind of week-end each week; although I made time for creativity, I did get to the end of the week-end feeling like I wasted it. But my books are put away, and I've sorted through piles and piles of paper, and I'm ready for the week to come.
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