Once organized, things then fall back into a glorious state of disarray. This is one of those innumerable laws of entropy. I’m not sure which one. There are an infinite number of them. I do know that when I’m organized, that things are easier to find. So work gets done more quickly.

Most recently Pete built a new book case upstairs. It now divides our bedroom space and my work space. The previous boundary was an end table which was piled high with books, magazines, and as of two weeks ago, a flat screen television.

The bedroom side bookcase contains the flat screen, which is now on a shelf. My bookcase contains books, notebooks,

A painting of Bootleg by Jacqui

magazines, art, and writing supplies – things that I now have easy access to when working on Lessons Twice Learned. This is because it is going to contain research information.

I also rearranged the shelves on the far left side of the room – they hold more books and office space. And I have gone one step further and rearranged books in my other work space, which is my writing cabin. I’m going to keep at it. I’m now eyeballing a plastic box that contains cards and correspondences. I might even get to putting addresses in my address book. I would put them into the hand held device, but I’m not sure that such things will always work. Got it on paper, got it near you, the odds are that you’ll always have it on hand.

My friend Jacqui is an artist who at times does very large paintings. She was renting work space for a while – working in a large room in a former church. This enabled her to do big works. She recently told me that she’s now working in a small space in her home. This means that her works aren’t as large. This got me to thinking that the amount of space available to visual artists has a direct effect on what they produce, particularly as this relates to size.

This is not as much so of writers, who usually work on a computer screen, although I suspect that some prefer smaller and some prefer larger screens. I myself prefer to work in larger spaces – my ideal space is down the road. We have friends who recently moved to Wisconsin. They had a contractor build them a huge house – the third floor had windows on three sides. I would have loved to work in that setting. I guess that I cultivate the wrong sorts of friends.

My theory is that being physically organized better enables one to be mentally organized. In other words, if one is physically organized, they’re less apt to feel mentally scattered. Now that I’m sort of organized, I’m feeling as though I’m proceeding with my work in a more linear fashion. I’m now working on If Wishes were Horses – I just finished putting in copy editing and revisionary changes in yet another draft, and in a few minutes will resume typing them into my computer copy. After I finish this, I’ll do the same with the proposal. Then on to Butte job application. After, I’ll resume work on Lessons Twice Learned.

The problem with writing books is that this takes a long time to do. So the best I can do is plug away at it and work in an organized fashion, as best I can ignoring distractions. Speaking of which – Pete hung a landline phone right next to my desk. I’m easily able to ignore the downstairs phone, but not as easily able to ignore the upstairs phone.

My writing about organization makes it appear as tough my universe (that is the world that I now inhabit) is miniscule. I am going to do something about this. This year, I’m going to go other places, and see other people I’ll feel more inclined to do this because I won’t feel as though I’ll be leaving things at loose ends. When I return from my worldly wandering, I’ll go back to my alcove work space and pick up where I left off. I suppose, organizationally, that that this will be a plus.