Critical mess

The fine art of pulling disorder from chaos

by Todd Pitock

I have a problem with organization. That is, I am disorganized. My logs are not logs. My checkbook is unbalanced. I tried Quicken, the personal-finance software that's supposed to be foolproof. Guess again. My receipts gather in a bin and exchange information on where they each came from and how long they've been hanging out.

I keep piles instead of files. They are loosely organized. One is for press materials, which includes releases, folders, brochures, and potential reference sources. One is things to read, a proud tower of magazines and newspaper clippings that refuses to fall over. One is for bills and correspondence. At home I keep a joint pile with my wife. It's for junk mail.

My office is my castle. It's a little room off the busiest street in a small town, and only I know all the good hiding places. And yet I am not master of the domain. There are insurrectionary forces. The cards in my Rolodex derailed themselves, slinked out of the compartment, and banded into a pile of their own, like a splinter group of anarchists. They de-
alphabetized themselves, a clever strategy that
anticipated my lack of will to reorder them.

---

The struggle between order and disorder is at once trivial and deeply mysterious. It exists across the spectrum of human consciousness, from religious institutions to office-supply stores -- both of which, I should note, are proliferating worldwide and are multibillion-dollar enterprises.

I have a friend who points out that you can
always tell a society's priorities by looking at its biggest buildings. In medieval Europe, for example, the biggest structures were churches. Our biggest stand-alone edifices are sports stadiums and big-box stores that help you get your life in order. In Los Angeles, they've merged, if only in name, in the
Staples Center.

The only people who do not fight constantly with disorder are dead people, and that's because all of their affairs are neatly contained in a box. As for the extremely orderly, it's almost impossible to live with them. There's a line between what's admirable and what's compulsive, and I maintain that when you have deposited all your "vital information" into a palm-sized computer -- called, naturally, an organizer -- and feel good about yourself, you've put one foot over that line. Perfect order is dark, joyless. Ritualized chaos is spontaneous. Just consider two stereotypes: Germans and Italians.

Or so I rationalize.

When I come into the office in the morning, I try not to look at the piles. This is surprisingly easy. After a while, I stop seeing them. But they have become organic. They keep growing. Sub-piles exist that I swear I had no hand in creating. Time and again I discover some resource I never knew I had -- and which might have been really useful six or 12 months earlier.

Every so often, I resolve to change. It feels good to clean up the office, to see the clear, gleaming surfaces of the two desks I keep (one for writing, the other for piles). But my desks have muscle memory and quickly snap back into mis-shape.

Here's the strange part. Within my chaos, there is a thread of order. I usually can find things. Yet every time I clean up my office, I can't find anything at all.

---

I thought of hiring an assistant to tend to the piles, but I am certain strange hands will unleash some bureaucratic poltergeist. My wife once bought me different-colored paper clips and suggested a color-based system. It was very logical, but it didn't take into account my "corporate culture" -- which is an official-sounding way of saying that I couldn't remember what each color stood for.

Ledger books that I buy with the intention of turning over a new leaf invariably remain pristine on the shelf until they acquire an old look. For no good reason whatsoever, at the next wave of resolve I replace them with new ones.

Each new tax year brings a strange mix of dread and elation. Dread because nothing is in order; elation because it means I've gotten through the previous year audit-free. I escape the audit, I believe, because I overpay to avoid the prospect of sharing my blank books with some forbidding and incredulous soul from the Internal Revenue Service.

---

Looking back, I believe my disorganization began as a survival mechanism. When I stepped out into the blinding sunlight of self-employment, I wasn't making much money. So, like any self-
respecting person bent on an idea that won't
conform to reality, I avoided the topic. Receipts, bills, invoices -- all that stuff reminded me of my ailing career, and so I chose not to be reminded.
By the time I was doing better, my habits were set.

Along the way, I developed a certain contempt for paperwork. A small activity for small minds. What am I, a paper-pusher? And under this lurks another fear: that if I start paying attention to my good luck, I'll invite an evil eye. Not that I'm superstitious, but as my mother wisely observed, why take chances?

In one of my short-lived intervals of reform, I bought a self-help book about how to become better organized. I was quite determined, and cleaned up my office but good. By the time I was done, the book was gone, and I haven't seen it since.

Todd Pitock lovingly attends to his chaos in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

---

The Out There archive

---