Strongly Worded

Out With The Old

So I just finished some hard-core Home Office Organization.

Not just the rearrangement of existing piles of paper, mind you, or even the creation of new piles. This project involved pile elimination. It involved the shredder. And it meant actually opening my Hardcore Filing Box and doing some actual filing (thus doing away with the year-old To Be Filed pile). I also reviewed the contents of the box, which was a like a porthole to memory lane. You know how that goes.

Some choice bits:

1) A credit card for Casual Corner. I opened the account to get 20% off a suit for a job interview (for a health care consulting company) in college. I dropped out of the interview process because I worried that I'd be helping hospitals cut costs and kick out patients. Whether there was grounds to that fear, I still don't know. The suit, however, was a solid investment. I still wear it.

2) Letters from my college roommate. Some really solid, reflective letters. She was--and remains--an amazing writer, but we have lost touch. Her birthday was a few weeks ago and I emailed her and never heard back. The letter made me wonder.

3) A bunch of essays I wrote for a Spanish composition class that I took at the start of my junior year abroad in Spain. One of them is about Spanish nightlife, and I wrote (in Spanish) that "I've only been here for two weeks and I'm already exhausted. I'm not sure how this society functions when people sleep so little." The T.A. made a note in the margins: "Give it time; you'll figure it out." (She was right.)

4) A bunch of emails I wrote a few years later, when I was living abroad again and being totally used by this selfish American. In the beginning, when he was lonely and linguistically challenged, we'd meet for coffee and ice cream and I'd listen to his problems. I helped him get established and brokered a deal with his landlord and helped him set up his phone and everything. I felt all honored that he trusted and needed me. Then, once he began to understand Spanish, he met cooler people and blew me off. I was 22 and naive and mystified by the behavior. Now I see that he was just a jerky version of Everyguy.

5) A file called "Home" that I started in 2000, when I first moved here. The file includes recipes from Good Housekeeping, with names like "Budget Blintzes" and "Tastiest Tacos". (I never prepared any of these dishes, despite the fact that they are purportedly "quick, inexpensive, and family-friendly".) In the same file is a pattern for a skirt that hides/enhances a pedestal sink. But I guess somehow I grew to accept the unsightly plumbing in my first Boston apartment, and never finished the project. Eight years later, however, the half-sewn material remains in my sewing basket.

6) A "Guide to Internet Viruses" prepared by the IT director at a job I held in 2001. The IT director was an awesome, subversive guy who recently died of cancer despite being 40ish. Needless to say, the information is pretty much obsolete by now, and I recycled the document. But not without a little silent tribute to its author.

I am not clear on when recycling is occurring during these festive times, so I have several heavy paper bags just waiting for pick up. All the papers have got to go, but I'm glad I get to hang on to them just a tiny bit longer.

Posted by Dori at 8:12 PM