Every now and then I have to get up and manage the chaos I live in. I call it ‘nowhere‘.

‘Where are you?‘
‘Nowhere.‘

Last night, the bedroom was ordered, the new shelf in the living/dining area is quietly being populated and organized even as the laundry on the bed found itself in temporary quarters, awaiting to be assigned whenever I call upon it.

The books have been problematic. Because of how I read, and because I read many books at the same time or reference many books at the same time, I end up with books all over the place with bookmarks, laid open, and sometimes with the pen I have been missing keeping a page where I had been making notes. Oh, and there’s that diamond headed drill bit I thought I lost propping open Gladwell’s, “What the Dog Saw“. I was looking for that when I put up the shelf. Maybe I should have organized the books before the shelf?

My father would shake his head at all of this. He was a steadfast person who left things in their place, and was not to be toyed with when his things were moved. My mother, on the other hand, would be as organized as required and let the chaos take on it’s own form and then organize that into something she thought was pretty.

My theory is that I leave things around because I have not found the best place for them to stay. Pens and journals are necessarily migratory, though I have been training myself to jot notes into my Samsung S22 Ultra… which has a bunch of notes that I have not yet imported. The tyranny of adapting to technology, once the curse of the generation before with blinking clocks on everything and requiring my generation to set the clocks… It’s not quite that bad. It’s a matter of finding an easy way to adopt it into my seemingly chaotic processes.

I am glad I found that pen though.

One of the pet peeves I’ve had is all these cables that seem to migrate of their own volition. However, I have found a solution for those of you interested in a neat little hack. I haven’t finished it yet, but picture suspended under a shelf a spring. Horizontal. Go to the hardware store if you have no springs laying around, as I do, and take a USB cable’s big end and find a spring that keeps it from falling when horizontal. I’m planning to mount mine below that shelf in the study. Cable management with an industrial look.

And why is this can of air here? Oh, it’s got that annoying amount left where it’s good only for a small job, but it’s enough to keep the can around. I desperately need to find something to use it on so I can get rid of it.

Oh. A collection of orphaned socks in the bedroom. These have been around a while with no matches found. They will now be permanently designated ‘rags’, and we’ll toss those into the ‘rag’ drawer. Diminishing benefit from waiting for their other halves to show up versus use as rags – rags wins.

How did it get this way? I know, and I try, I honestly do, to manage the chaos as it happens.

It will happen someday.

I should write about this.

Oh.