My desk tends to be messy. Barely controlled chaos may be more accurate.
Everything seems to end up on my desk. Mostly paper. I write lots of notes to myself. Phone numbers, story ideas, character ideas, reminders, notes about things I don’t want to forget, ideas I intend to transfer to a more permanent storage medium. And there are office supplies – envelopes, stamps, mailing labels, pens (so may pens!), index cards, thumb drives, etc. And finally there are knick-knacks – a fidget spinner, bookmarks, a tablet.
I’m currently cleaning off my desk and sorting through all the mess. A lot of it is being trashed. I’m copying the various ideas I wanted to keep into digital files. The office supplies are being put into an organizer. I’ve found pages with lists of URLs on them. Those take a while as I go through, enter them into a browser, and see what they are. Some of them I put into a document with a note for later research.
I find odd items.
Like a Post-It note with ‘keep the social interactions pure’ written on it.
I found an index card with a poem written on it:
Beyond the misty veil
i often see
and of your death I certain be
but your trust and
faith in me
for Ra is a strong father.
I think that might be one of the wife’s.
I found my slide rule, which I’ve been looking for. I don’t remember how to use it, but there are YouTube tutorials for that.
I found a stack of gift cards to various restaurants. I don’t remember where I got most of them. I have no idea if they are any good any more. They should be, but I’m starting to see gift cards to restaurants with expiration dates on them. If they are good I can eat out a couple of times.
I found yet more fortune cookie fortunes. I’ve got two envelopes with just about every fortune cookie fortune I’ve gotten in my adult life. I had to put them both in a larger envelope, along with all the new ones I’ve found. Yes, I have a reason for collecting them. No, I’m not going to tell you what it is (at least, not yet.)
At this point I’ve cleaned off about a third of my desk. I know I have some newsletters in the parts I haven’t cleaned yet that I need to collect up and get packed. There may be a book or two in all the clutter. I definitely need to get those packed.
It just keeps going on and on, my Hordeling, but there is an end in sight.
If you’d like to support my efforts, why not buy me a chocolate chip cookie through my Ko-Fi page? https://ko-fi.com/jhusum
A YouTube tutorial for using a slide rule:
“If you have access to this tutorial, then you also have access to an electronic calculator which is quicker, easier to use, and has a significantly smaller chance of user error creeping into your results. Dumbass.”
In a Perfect World ™, more tutorials would be like this.
And in an imperfect world, which we definitely live in, the power goes out and all those dumbasses that can only use a calculator can’t do basic math, while I’ll be able to calculate all sorts of things.
Pencil and paper?
Which the dumbasses who can’t do math without their calculators won’t be able to do.
Stop harshing on my illusion of technological superiority.