You told yourself last week that in order for this project to be successful, that you were going to need to maintain a Zen-like attitude. This, in part, was dependent upon your keeping in mind, all the time, that until things change, you are just a placeholder, on site as merely a visible presence.

You held to what you told yourself today, though at times it was very difficult. However, difficulty is what you have always thrived on. Add to the above, this project’s success is also going to be dependent upon your remaining flexible.

Even the best laid plans go awry, and today was no exception. You lost sleep going over in your head what you were going to do today – work in the catacombs where the sorted and distributed books reside.

For starters, you were instead pushed by a VCRS staff member in the direction of a pallet full of unsorted books. No matter that you didn’t envision starting your day this way, sorting is your forte. And you, being very proprietary, don’t want others to sort. So you dove into the assorted boxes and kept the paperbacks and hardbacks that you thought others might like, and discarded the ones that were either threadbare, out-of-date, or championing the far right political agenda.

Those books that were then sorted, you left them in boxes, on a table, with post-its on them which read, “to be categorized.”

The sorting took you all told, about an hour. Then, without missing a beat, you ventured into the catacomb that was the original book store, and began organizing what was on shelves and a metal bakery roller shelf. These shelves contained books in the original categories, most notably, fur, fin, and feather; crafts; indoor and outdoor gardening; and cooking. These shelves also contained numerous books that did not fit into these categories, and therein surfaced a problem. What, you thought, do I do with them? Some you set aside and later discarded. And others you set aside, the plan being to put them in their rightful categories later on.

You made progress, and two hours later, these shelves were looking pretty good. And so you moved on to Catacomb #2. The autobiographical shelf was fairly complete, but after this, chaos reigned. You recalled that this past summer, in your absence, someone, or sometwo, moved the books from Catacomb #1 to Catacomb #2. You have a good idea who this was because in the past, when she sorted, she set aside all the weird ass religious books, and as well, those in which the subject matter was the right wing agenda.

It seemed futile, making categories for shelves filled with books on multiple subjects. So you instead spent the rest of your afternoon doing a purge and removing the crap that the previous sorter had shelved.

You did get grumpy because you forgot your lunch. Plus, after a while, the sorting and categorizing becomes mind numbing. When, finally, you’d had enough, you partner showed up and saved the day by picking up a Martha Stewart cookbook that you were going to discard because you found two copies on the shelves.

You’re now going to take a few days off. And in the meantime, you’ll again start making plans that will undoubtedly again go awry.

Next: 272. 10/3/20: And the Beat Rolls On