A Clean Desk

Ah, cleaning.

In my heart of hearts, I hope it will lead to a more orderly life, where I actually remember what I'm doing from one minute to the next and I don't let things get buried for three years until they stop being relevant.

I have visions of a world in which I do one thing at a time (maybe two, tops), do it well and get it done within a reasonable time frame. A world in which I know what I should be doing today, and I can still remember what that is by the time I get through my emails in the morning.

A world in which I'm not storing large amounts of useless junk for no apparent reason - even though I'm sure it seemed useful and worth keeping at some point.

I fear, however, that I am not the kind of person who can create such an environment. Orderly workspaces, like tropical rain forests, need the appropriate life forms to generate the atmosphere necessary to sustain the existence of the habitat as a whole.

In this analogy, an orderly desk is a tropical rain forest. I am a cactus. Can the two ever really live for long in the same place? Will the cactus suck the moisture and life out of the tropical rain forest? Or is it possible to foster the rain forest long enough for the cactus to adapt to it, so that it becomes a tropical rain forest cactus?

Perhaps, like the Australian bush, what is truly needed is a fire to purge the old life so that new life can grow?

Perhaps I should have been using the cleaning products in a better ventilated room. Good thing I left my colleges there with the fumes while I left to sit on the reference desk for an hour. By the time I return to my temporarily clean desk, they might have caught up with me.