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Since I'm going to be leaving tomorrow, I decided to look through my desk drawers this morning, see what was there, under the random bits of paper.
The first thing that I found was lots more paper, not all of it random. I wound up sorting it into three categories:
This is more complicated than it sounds. For example, I hadn't realized that my copy of Lewis Thomas's The Medusa and the Snail was here, and I want to keep that. I'd also forgotten that I even owned Daniel Deronda, and I put that on the "someone take this, please" filing-cabinet-top, because I doubt I'll ever read it, much as I like most of Elliot's other books.
The real problem is sheer quantity. It's amazing how much can collect in two large drawers in a decade. If I'd started this a week earlier, I wouldn't be looking at an over-weight backpack this evening, and giving up on the gym. I also wouldn't be abandoning things like some perfectly decent wrapping paper, which I just won't have time/space to carry home tonight.
Yes, there's tomorrow. But anything I take tomorrow will be carried to Washington, and then home. That's an incentive to pare things down. Also to drag most of it home tonight, including sample issues of the magazine I've spent most of my adult life working on; some random clothing; an issue of Mike Scott's zine Zorn; and my nice business-card stock. (I had a bit of free time, so I redesigned the cards to have my home phone number, and printed out enough to use up the couple of sheets I had left.)
I'm virtually certain I'll leave something behind; the question is whether it will be something important enough to come back for, when I'm no longer on the payroll, given the annoying new building policies about checking ID. Those shoes didn't fit properly anyway.
The first thing that I found was lots more paper, not all of it random. I wound up sorting it into three categories:
- take home
- recycle/throw out
- leave here
This is more complicated than it sounds. For example, I hadn't realized that my copy of Lewis Thomas's The Medusa and the Snail was here, and I want to keep that. I'd also forgotten that I even owned Daniel Deronda, and I put that on the "someone take this, please" filing-cabinet-top, because I doubt I'll ever read it, much as I like most of Elliot's other books.
The real problem is sheer quantity. It's amazing how much can collect in two large drawers in a decade. If I'd started this a week earlier, I wouldn't be looking at an over-weight backpack this evening, and giving up on the gym. I also wouldn't be abandoning things like some perfectly decent wrapping paper, which I just won't have time/space to carry home tonight.
Yes, there's tomorrow. But anything I take tomorrow will be carried to Washington, and then home. That's an incentive to pare things down. Also to drag most of it home tonight, including sample issues of the magazine I've spent most of my adult life working on; some random clothing; an issue of Mike Scott's zine Zorn; and my nice business-card stock. (I had a bit of free time, so I redesigned the cards to have my home phone number, and printed out enough to use up the couple of sheets I had left.)
I'm virtually certain I'll leave something behind; the question is whether it will be something important enough to come back for, when I'm no longer on the payroll, given the annoying new building policies about checking ID. Those shoes didn't fit properly anyway.
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