Yesterday I had a big, big breakthrough – I finished a month of filing! You’re probably thinking, “I knew she was nuts, but I didn’t know she was this nuts!” Well, think about it, doesn’t everyone hate and actually loathe dealing with paper? Papers seem perfectly innocent but they’re actually like rabbits on crack. They reproduce at terrifying speed and soon every drawer, corner, and flat surface is stuffed full of things to read, bills to pay, ads you want to keep, and forms to fill out.

I’ve been experimenting with different filing systems for years: subject, chronological, a mix. I was stuck in the file folder, file cabinet rut for decades – what a black hole. Nothing ever saw the light of day again. Finally, in the 1990’s when I was teaching and had those lovely summers off, I had a brain storm: empty the file folders into three ring binders by topic. Dividers within would be subtopics: HEALTH could have Prevention, Diseases, Metabolic, Sleep, and for me, Thyroid. These lived on shelves, slid easily into my hand, and I could actually find something again. Over two summers, I emptied two 4-drawer cabinets into a couple dozen notebooks and whole garbage bags for recycling. When I moved, I gave the cabinets to the movers for $50 off my bill – liberation!

Well, 10 years later, I still used and liked my notebooks, but had started up a parallel set of files, telling myself they were quicker and easier than walking across the room to put something in a notebook. Even easier, I also had piles in baskets loosely by topic (Spiritual, To Do, Family History). When I wanted to find a memorable handout on a topic for a class or writing project, I lost my mind find trying to find it. So I decided in December I had to have one system now and forever, and the notebooks won.

It took days, then weeks, and many, many hours but I finally did it, leaving only a few files for Current Financial and immediate writing projects, plus two baskets (Family History and To Do). Yesterday, in the last week, I was in my office by 7:30 a.m. and didn’t leave, except for lunch, until 4:15. Singing along to every Broadway musical I own, I immersed myself in folders to empty, notebook divider tabs, and two kinds of hole punch. Hundreds of papers filled 1″ binders, sometimes progressing to a 2″, and even a 3″ as they grew like teenagers on steroids.

Finally, it was done. My office was clean and quiet. I’d only been out of the house once in five days. I’d lived and slept in two sets of sweats and barely combed my hair. I headed to the Post Office to get a huge stack of mail and then to Albertson’s for whatever gluten free chocolate treats were on offer – mini brownies, as it turned out. I devoured them with my fresh-from-the-farm, ice-cold milk and sat in a daze as every muscle in my body ached from the tsunami of stored ideas bombarding my aging brain.

All this insanity reminded me of an experience during my time teaching high school special ed students at Kearns High in Utah. One spring our principal surprisingly let us take a bus load of students river rafting on the Green River, wide with no rapids to speak of. Each teacher had a raft of 4-6 kids and we started out, being advised to just stick to the main current down the center of the river. Naturally, we didn’t follow that advice being attracted to the sights along the widely spaced banks.

Big mistake. We found ourselves going in circles around a large, almost invisible whirlpool, 30′ across, near one bank. It was pleasant gliding under willows and back out towards the middle of the river until we came around a second, then a third time and we realized what had happened. As we came around the fourth time and headed back out, I screamed, “Row like Hell!” – breaking our class rule about appropriate language. The kids laid into it and we broke out of the circular current just in time to rejoin the other rafts. All’s well that ends well, as they say, and we didn’t need rescuing.

For too long, I’d been shuffling piles of documents too precious to throw away. Waterloo finally came – it was either “Row like Hell” or stay stuck in a giant, almost invisible whirlpool of procrastination, rationalization, and denial, with a black hole looming – threatening to drown me in a sea of paper!

I’ve rowed my way out of other whirlpools before and it had always taken all my faculties to pull out. There were brownies, new books, and rest at the end of this one, and I realized there always is a reward for every tough challenge conquered. It’s comforting to remember that when a new whirlpool threatens to keep us stuck and we cling fearfully to patterns from the past.

Whirlpool
Courtesy ByShurtinc.Wikepedia Commons