Mess Blessed

My office at home is a mess, but I'm in it. I shouldn't say "but" like the mess and my inhabitation of it are contradicting points. It is neither a statistical unlikelihood nor a personal inconvenience that my workspace is messy. I happen to like working amid clutter and disarray. But usually the mess is of my own making. This is more of a general byproduct of the transition. There was a ton of stuff in our old computer desk (OCD). Our OCD/hutch/walk-in wardrobe was a beast that, ironically enough, happened to house our old computer. The old computer is broke, rendering its monstrosity of a home somewhat unwelcome in our cozy little guest room/office complex.

So we decided to downsize our office equipment to just a desk. And when your main computer is a laptop, your desk need only be as big as . . . a lap. We got a rather small desk from Target, emptied out the OCD, and temporarily put its contents all over the guest room bed and floor as well as the small Target desk (STD). As it turns out, the OCD may have been the single largest storage space in our house. Heather wanted to go through everything before the ginormous mounds of clutter found a new home, and I had been working on the couch using my coffee table and/or lap as my primary work center.

Unfortunately, I had been taking up Addison's primary afternoon fun center, and I just couldn't live with myself. Heather and Addison were finding it hard to live with me, too, so I cleared off the STD and got to work. So I'm in the messy office that's getting less and less messy as time goes by and Heather goes through it.

But honestly, I'm gonna miss the mess when it's gone. I'd show you a picture, but Heather would not approve of posting photographic evidence of messiness in our house for the entire wired world to see. This written account is allowed only because my reputation for twisting the truth is sufficiently widespread to undermine the credibility of any claims that said chaos does in fact exist to the degree I have maintained herein.

Since cleanliness reigns in our home, I like to have a mess to call my own, and the office really fits the bill. Although, while I'm typing this, I think Heather's cleaning. You could probably peform surgery in there by now. Anyway, a mess is a sign that work is in progress, that the end is not yet upon us . . . that it's safe to be imperfect and untidy. When everything's clean in an office, starting to write feels like trying to break into an impeccably shrink-wrapped package. There's no gap. No bubble. No entry point. In a messy office, writing feels like opening a present your kid giftwrapped. Anywhere you start, you know you know you're gonna make headway.

So . . . goodbye, mess. It's been great. I won't get too sad. As long as I'm working in that office, I know . . . you'll be back soon.

P.S. My nephew's name is Theodore KaYin (gah-yeen) Kellogg (or as he will be known to me from this point forward, Teddy K).