Desks and work

 

The desk!

A messy desk is a sign of a creative person.

So the narrative goes.

During my working days, I kept a fairly neat desk. Oh, I had my postcards and buttons. At one point, I even had storage space above my computer to keep copies of the print products that I designed.

But, mostly, I did not like a lot of crap cluttering up my work space. It was always extraordinary to me that coworkers could, in a building that OSHA would have summarily condemned, pile up papers, news releases, clippings and all other sorts of flotsam and jetsam. Once, many years ago, an editor pulled out a sheaf from a notorious hoarder's pile and she (the hoarder) immediately knew that her territory had been disturbed. Tears followed.

(And seriously, my newsroom was definitely a tinderbox waiting to be lit. There were the aforementioned  hoarders and then there was the morgue. Full of ancient clippings of long-ago events that would set you sneezing [the clippings, not the events] the moment you pulled out a file from an overstuffed shelf. Unfortunately, too, it was unguarded, so many valuable prints were stolen over the years.)

So the narrative of now is this.

 My desk at home is messy, but in an orderly way. My morgue is two paces away, containing a boxes of ancient and fascinating clippings about my life: diaries, photos, letters. I don't think OSHA would condemn it, but it definitely needs some Marie Kondo-type attention.

Collage No. 9

I'm making stuff from the flotsam and jetsam that sits on it. 

(Favorite quote from a former colleague, who got tired of some copy desk questions: "Is anal-retentive hyphenated?) :)