We are to confess our faults to one another and to pray for one another. So I think I ought to confess that for several years now my home filing system has been composed of an inappropriately sized moving box, a few manila envelopes leftover from things that had been mailed to me, white envelopes of the same basic size from different mailings, dilapidated and unlabeled folders which have somehow fallen into my hands, small envelopes which seemed like the perfect place to tuck spare things in, a few plastic file carriers of different colors which seem too pretty to use, a 31 day organiser the pockets of which contain all sorts of interesting papers, an useful clear plastic folder from the Red Cross and so on.
The result is that most of the papers which ought to be neatly and regularly filed wind up strewn about me on the floor every couple months while I try to figure out what belongs where and how to group it all accordingly, under the great mental and emotional strain that it necessarily involves for certain personality types to sit on a floor surrounded by papers.
And so I am a very bad secretary; useless in a secretarial crisis. The vital receipts are likely to be found, or simply lost, anywhere. I practice Avoidance when it comes to needing to look for them. And this is very, very bad.
I feel that if I only had file folders and labels and markers and a magic box I could unleash the awesome and mighty filing force within. Terrible and unconstrainable would be my filing deeds. But then I pause to remember that once before at a temp job, having unfettered access to these powerful implements and a whole wall of business files, I found my inner filing freak; and it was shortly thereafter that things began to go badly betwixt myself and the office admin . . .
I truly do feel a bit despairing about this aspect of my nature, among those other aspects which do not recognise the knife sharpener on a knife block, make rice automatically when daydreaming about something else in the kitchen, and so on. I must find a way to be more practical. I must.
I Resolve to Be A Better Practical Person, At Once. And I am willing to smite the back of my own hand with the clam prodder (ie, knife sharpener) if I do not shape up immediately.
4 comments
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October 4, 2012 at 6:16 pm
Lauren
Systemization grows with complexity, Heidi. ‘Tis truly a blessing to have a box-size life.
October 6, 2012 at 12:09 am
Heidi
‘Simple’ is definitely a word I would use to describe Me, though I’m not sure ‘simplicity’ is! I do hope the files never exceed this magic bound or I don’t know how I shall cope.
June 5, 2013 at 8:24 pm
Lindsay
Heidi, after reading your post here and your personality type elsewhere (which I believe to be the same as mine), I must say that. . .well, you have my empathy! The practical world doesn’t seem made for some of us; and yet we find God made us and it to go together…
June 27, 2013 at 7:57 pm
Heidi
The rest of this unfolding drama goes like this: at the time of writing this post I did determine to reorder the home filing system and to that end I purchased a sort of filing CRATE and all sorts of filing file folders. I wanted to purchase a marker too; but I thought that I should just use plain black ink. I did not deserve the indulgence of a special filing marker. This filing crate sat inside my room, by degrees working its way out to the hallway, and then to the garage, where finally, it was filled with YARN. Only this week I remembered it. In an incredible and unprecedented act of irresponsible selfishness, I appropriated it for other purposes relating to non yarn crafts and photos. Our home filing system meanwhile has overflowed into two of the small top drawers of my dresser. But its presence there has this advantage: that I can usually easily locate anything fairly recent that ought to have been filed away more inaccessibly, and into such an arcane system of organisation that it could never be found again.