I can’t write! I better clean my office.

Today’s task is a physical thing. Sorting through STUFF and actually throwing SOMETHING away. It is the physical process of making room.
Every day I make a list. The tasks are right there at the edge of my brain, flowing to the tip of my pen. “Clean out your office,” pops into my head. Even though this challenge was my idea, I write it down at the bottom of the page, with plenty of room for tasks I actually want to do. I argue with the voices. Creating the 30daysofyou website has to be more important than sorting through the post mortem that has become my personal workspace.

It doesn’t look obviously crazy. I have found a way to LOOK normal at least. My office is no Nate Berkus showroom either. Just a humble little corner to create some inspiration. It’s a humble little corner full of placeholders, papers and momentos and office STUFF I plan on taking care of someday. That someday is today, I think.
List completed, I struggle to write the copy. I ignore the project plans from ten years ago stuffed in my drawers. I pretend not to see a cell phone bill from 2008. I don’t want to wonder what is in the portable grayish blue file box I’m touching with my feet under the desk. Each job, each office move, each time I moved from one place to another place, the layers are there like the ruins in Rome.
I don’t have time. It will take too much time to sort through it all and I want to do it right. It’s part of my challenge!
I type and delete the same sentence five times. I want to be inspirational but I don’t feel inspired. I feel like I want to start over. Go back fifteen years and NOT accumulate all this crap. I know I can’t do that. So, I quietly close my laptop. I push my chair back from the desk. I take a deep breath. That someday is today.
Here’s what I noticed/ thought as I was cleaning:

1. The tidying I was doing to LOOK sane actually leads to more insanity. I had to force myself to deal with each item as it came up. No setting aside until later. Put it away and then I won’t have to think about until I need it.
2. The Value of grouping Like with Like. I hung on to the marketing and study guides from the first year of speaking. I didn’t throw away valuable business cards. There is a power in having all the business cards in one box, in choosing WHICH marketing material I don’t want to forget and putting in a folder labeled “Year 1, marketing material.” The business cards can be transformed into opportunities, the marketing retrospective into reference material.
3. Everything means nothing. Editing is a powerful thing. I kept all those papers. As certain pieces of information went out of date, it buried the stuff that actually could make a difference.
4. I am afraid. I didn’t want to throw away a project plan I created in 1998. Why am I so afraid to let it go? Dig in a get rid of it. You will survive you actually need some of it and you don’t have it anymore.
5. It was amazing how much junk was actually in there.
6. I have more to do. There are some things I didn’t have time to do, such as taking care of the CD’s that had information from other work situations. But now it’s just a task. GO THROUGH THE CD’s.
7. I feel calmer. I’m writing right now, and aforementioned write-and-delete pattern has vanished. I was fighting the mess! The stacks must have kept me from working!