My office tends to be neat and tidy. It wasn’t always that way because years ago I lived in a little condo. When I was self publishing, I got a foot high stack of mail a day, and had to juggle the demands of an office, art studio, and the piles of inventory in 900 square feet of space.
To add to the cluttery mess, back in the 1980′s my mentor, science fiction artist Frank Kelly Freas, was forced to downsize from a large home to a small apartment. He gave most of his studio to me, including his decades of morgue file collections and tons of art supplies. For years, I had to keep all this in a rented storage unit. Since then, several artists have bequeathed to me the remains of their studios. About a year ago, from another artist I received 8 huge boxes of ancient reference books and art supplies which had to be sorted and archived. Some of these items were nearly 100 years old.
When an artist gives me their treasures, I feel a strong obligation to take care of them. If I can’t make use of them, I have to pass them on. The tools-supplies-notes seem to me like the remains of someone’s mind. It’s hard for me to get rid of any piece of paper, and procrastination makes that pile of paper grow. Year after year, I’ve avoided sorting that pile, and year after year, it’s gotten worse.
My work files – art and business – have never been in proper order. Current files yes, anything from the past no.
Have you ever ordered something from me, written a letter, asked me to send something? You got a chirpy “Right away!” response. 90% of the time, right away means right away. The other 10 % of the time, whatever I meant to do got buried in the Paper Pile of Doom. The un-filed 10,000 pages of original art, the 20 year-old legal documents, the fan mail, the old reference files…God forbid anything of yours gets lost in the Paper Pile of Doom, because it will take me months to find again.
Moving out to the farm gave me lots more room for sorting and cleaning out these files and the several dozen boxes of stuff. But moving also made the problem worse when an almost helpful acquaintance decided to help me out by grabbing handfuls of paper and files out of cabinets, and just throwing them in to moving boxes. With no thought of pesky things like keeping alphabetized items in order. Or even making sure the files were right side up when thrown into the boxes. Which destroyed the file system.
It is a new year, and I am finally on the last box of the Paper Pile of Doom – one last box of unsorted paper.
Most of what is strewn about in this picture has been pre-sorted, but still needs to be sorted again. The art is still not in order.
The ruthless pruning has given me lots more room. I have also been sorting out books and collectibles to make even more room for proper filing of art. I have cleared bookshelves of books. Art will be slipped into folders and placed on those shelves.
This process has taken a long time. It is liberating and I am very relieved to see the end of it.
However, I did not expect it to be so upsetting. I’ve been digging up old correspondence and legal files. When I pick up a piece of paper, there is a powerful memory attached to it. Sometimes that memory completely derails me. I get caught up all over again. I find something about which I had mercifully forgotten, and all comes rushing back. I can lose hours to a fugue state musing over old business.
I now realize why I have been procrastinating from dealing with the Paper Pile of Doom.
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