Neat

Confession time again. When I don't have time (that is, most of the time), I tend to turn my desk into a haven of messy work space. One desk, no filing cabinet, and countless documents, letters, and manuscripts bumping together, frantic as atoms. On many days, I simply pull books out of a jumble of messy documents. Well, my reputation of being a messy guy grows in proportion to the height of the piles on and around my desk. Usually, three days is about all it takes for the piles to grow big enough to block my view of the computer screen, at which point another pile will sprout elsewhere.

Dealing with the mess on my desk is as much fun as visiting the dentist; no one will ever want to share this private bit with others. Conjure up an image of taking showers in the seventh- or eighth-grade gym. It's really about opening the insides in front of everyone, who could see your everything or your lack of everything.

As is often true with embarrassing story in our life, we will grow out of it eventually. For heaven's sake, I'm getting less and less guilt-ridden about the way I tolerate mess. Albert Einstein put it this way: "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what then, is an empty desk?"

Truth be told, I have been lately reading A Perfect Mess, a book that inspires me to learn that our bedroom is a pretty good place to maintain a mess. For those of you who think otherwise and struggle to keep a perfectly neat bedroom, I see no reason why you should miss this book. As the book captures the heart of it, making a bed when you get up in the morning is like tying a shoe after you've taken it off.