A fine mess

I haven’t worked in the shop for a week. It’s amazing how quickly it’s turned into a Superfund Site.

I’ve just come off two months of intensive daily – and occasionally nightly – shop work wrapping up a book project. Most of what I’m doing now takes place in my office organizing and processing photos, writing up projects, uploading finished chapters and files to my publisher’s server, etc. Pretty much everything I’ve done for the last week has been sitting in front of a computer.

Now, I’ve talked before how someone else in this house who shall not be named – but since there are only two people here, and it’s not me, and the cats have alibis, we all know who it is – uses my shop as a dumping ground for things destined for the attic or otherwise needing put away. Well, in this last week of concentrated office work a terrible thing has happened: I’ve become that other person.

Concurrent with, but not related to, the concentrated office work, we’ve gotten several Amazon shipments, a return of an electronic item I’d sent away for warranty repair, plus not one but two new tools sent to me for review. As a result, we have a wealth of shipping boxes and packing materials that I just don’t have time to deal with it, so I’ve been tossing it all into the shop.

By “tossing,” I mean literally just throwing it all out there. As in walking through the kitchen with an armload of boxes and packing, opening the shop door, then just letting it fly and allowing gravity to do that wonderful thing it does. On the one hand, it’s all boxes and packing – i.e., mostly air – so I know that taking care of it later will only take a few minutes.

On the other hand, I’ve gotten a sense of what that other person-who-shall-not-be-named gets from the practice.

It’s an exhilarating feeling that I hope isn’t habit forming.

A.J.