I have too much crap!

Why do I carry my entire life around with me? What did I do before e-mail and internet and 24-hour everything? I have a briefcase. It's about 99% unrelated to work. In my position, I don't take work home -- except maybe my brainstorming over my newsletter. So my briefcase is full of our bills, the mail, small publications I keep meaning to read, catalogs, brochures, policies, etc., that I need to deal with. Nine times out of ten I don't even look at the stuff in there during the work day -- but here I am, every day, lugging it back and forth from home to work and back. When I do have time to go through it and get everything organized, I have this perverse sense of accomplishment and calm. And when I don't have time, it's teeming with paper and whatever the hell else I've tossed in there that I will ignore for days, weeks, or months on end (except the bills, which are always paid in a timely fashion, of course). It mocks me. It tells me that I put on a good show, but I'm not as organized as I would like to believe. Don't get me wrong, I have my shit together -- but I could be better. When I get home, though, I don't look through it, except to pay bills. So when do I look at this stuff? Sometimes never. Do you ever keep anything for so long that it's gone out of date? Then I just toss it. After carrying it around for weeks and months. What the hell is the use in that? Right, none. But I still do it. The best of intentions . . .

But I did go through it during lunch today. And it looks much better. And it's not as bad as I thought! Then again, as I started (as a compulsive list-maker) making my list of things to be done as I thought of them while rifling through my stuff, I realized I have a LOT of shit to do. A lot! It's not even stuff I absolutely have to do. It's stuff I SHOULD do. Should. That's a word that'll muck things up. I don't HAVE to do it, but I SHOULD do it. Ugh. Phone calls, research, organization, cleaning, and on and on and on. Well, at least I can cross off "vacation planning." Except we want to plan a vacation to Hawaii next, maybe for our 2nd anniversary in February. Gah! Vacation planning is back on the list! See how that works? My list is perpetual. Such is life. Till it ends, of course.

Well, it's not as overwhelming as all that, I guess. I got a bunch of stuff done before I left for work this morning, so I have no house cleaning to do, no chores except some laundry (talk about perpetual), and things are pretty mellow at work. So I need to get back to my MS Publisher classes and my newsletter and my filing and get all that junk done so I can go home and -- who am I kidding? -- IGNORE MY BRIEFCASE! I'm gonna make dinner & watch TV when I get home. Maybe even have a beer. Or two.

Today's a pretty good day.