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Mess

All my life my mother has told me that my obsession with categorization and hierarchical storage stems from my birthdate, suggesting that tidiness is somehow a characteristic shared by all virgos. This I thoroughly disregard, since I place very little stock in astrology, so I tend to place the blame on some kind of latent homosexuality or estrogen overload.

The orderly ‘organization–freak’ behavior extends from the Home volume of my hard drive to the shoe rack in my closet, from my CD collection to my bathroom cabinet, and it generally saves me a lot of time when I’m looking for shit. My desk, though, is another matter altogether. As if some other ‘nest–building’ organization paradigm is at work, my desk is strewn with papers and sketches, receipts, comics, magazines, the yellow pages, various plugs and rechargers for my miniature gadget army, and a socket wrench. Without this shit surrounding me I can barely work at my computer, as if it serves as inspiration, and though I know that an empty desk cannot fill an empty head I’m often tempted to clean it. Why? I can’t use my desk for anything but computing.

It doesn’t matter how big the surface is, I’ll cover it. I used to sit my computer atop a 7' by 4' trestle table, and I’ve recently downsized to a simple 5' by 3'… it makes no difference. The desk isn’t a workspace, it’s an elaborate computer stand surrounded by garbage. I’ve actually considered bringing in a second desk for non–computing activities such as drawing and writing (yes, sometimes I write with a pen and paper, though my penmanship is officially fucked), but that just seems stupid. The solution? Well, there is no solution. Learning to love the mess is probably step one on the road to recovery. Maybe that second desk idea isn’t so stupid after all.