Clearing My Desk

It's a big desk.  Black laminate flat-top from Conran's, which probably no longer exists, measuring 72 x36 inches = 18 square feet of surface, nearly all occupied.  At hand, my laptop centrally.  Planning papers to my right, accumulated a bit more than optimal.  To my left mostly stuff better relocated to be replaced with better things to keep at hand.  Beyond reach to the right, stuff.  In my view occupying the entire far half more stuff, paper to write on, rulers to measure things.  DVDs that nobody uses.  My handwritten journals from thirty years ago when people recorded their thoughts and memories in script.  Those are personal treasures that stay there.  I had a fondness for maps, again made obsolete both as navigation aids and as devices to explore unseen parts of the world that I am never likely to visit personally.  I have a second stash near my other desk.  Perhaps consolidate them.  File cards in boxes, unused in decades.  Some real mementos, a bronze figure of the White House that I bought for myself for fifty cents on my first family vacation to Washington in the Kennedy years.  And next to it, a rock that my pre school daughter crudely colored as a gift to Dad.  Those are memories.  They stay.  At various time I thought I might dabble in art.  Have pastels, a full self-contained art kit in a wooden box, calligraphy starter kit, and drawing pencils, none but the drawing pencils ever used.  And lots of loose leafs which contain nothing but blank loose-leaf paper.

Drug companies when they were still permitted to leave logo items for doctors left me a variety of plastic clipboards which I still use.  And I use marble notebooks, one to record my physical data weekly, the orange one to record three worthy things that I did each day, Sunday through Thursday.  And I have pocket folders to monitor progress on active projects .  My desktop has two wire stands to allow me to insert things.  Each has important stuff, largely unused but not things to discard.  My calendar with Jewish dates and weekly Torah portions are at hand.  Instructions for an upcoming endoscopy are at hand, as are my expense records, recorded electronically on Excel each month but backed up by the handwritten data filed on loose-leaf paper which I then bind in small colored report folders.  Wedged between than I have three tubes of analgesic balms, two Voltaren, one Icy Hot, or generic equivalents.  And then at the far end, there's a box, a handsome wooden one with brass hinges, obtained as a gift, ideal for storage.  If there is anything in it, I long forgot.  And above it, tapes for a tape recorder.  I still have a usable tape recorder for microcassettes as well as a digital recorder onto which I still record my personal thoughts.  And there's a harmonica which I intend to learn to play, though it gets low enough priority that is just stays in place.  To my left, I have a DVD player. My current computer did not come with one so I bought an add-on.  Not nearly as good as the ones factory installed but at the edges of serviceable the few times I need it.  My pills stay to my left, placed in a weekly pill case with the labelled bottles kept downstairs in the kitchen.   There's a nonfunctioning tablet which needs to go to electronics recycling, an active tablet selectively used, an autographed paperback cookbook which i like to read.  I should keep it near my bed where I read it, but don't want to risk having an autographed book get overwhelmed by other stuff.  Two headphones, one wired, the other wireless are also on my left, along with Hebrew papers that need ritual disposal.  These are better consolidated downstairs with other papers needing ritual disposal.  And some plain recycling.  I keep a paper shopping bag for recycling on the floor to the right of my desk.  And there's a paperback on neuroscience, the guidebook for an OLLI course I took a few years back.  Still have a few more chapters to read of that one.  It needs a home other than my desk, but not so obscure that I will never seek it out.

Despite the plethora of stuff that I will never use and things that I might use that merit better locations, My desk remains a personal destination, even if the only usable part is where I place the laptop to be opened.  Probably the back half will remain a repository for the obsolete, though I would like to start using the many art supplies placed there. Instead, I need to make the front half clear, from the left side to the right.  I think that mostly possible.  It will need to be done in stages, progress assessed by a timer clock or by a regional plan.  I tend to do better with timers but think more by region.  Whichever, I have a growing will to make the desk in My Space, already a place I seek out, a place where I can accomplish to my ability.