The Verbs of Life

I'm cleaning off my main desk and creating files, some new, some the identical files I create every time my system loses its effectiveness.

I'm going great guns, filling trash cans and stacking up piles.  I thought I might be far enough along that I could stop and make a list of things to do. 

A mental scan of tasks revealed I don't have the time, paper, or inclination to make the list of substance the coming appearance of December requires.

A better option, I thought, was to make a list of verbs. We've lived by verbs since our Dick, Jane, and Sally days; ("Run, Dick, run."  "Go, Spot, go.").  Theologian Mary Daly gave her life to verbs, of which God was one.  Verbs, no matter your theological persuasion, are the key to happiness.


Here's the list:
repair
restore
clean
scan
research
purchase
organize
dry out
wrap
write (correspondence)
write (business)
write (for publication)
photograph
learn (how to photograph items)
sign
address
clean out
scrub
discard.

That should put enough parameters on my day, especially since I've left off some important verbs like "mail" and "walk" and "eat."  However, there's such a thing as being too organized.

I came to my conclusion after reading some organizing-themed blogs.  The authors offer suggestions and tools, sometimes free, sometimes not, such as templates for laying out chores and -- well, I don't know what other kind of templates they offer, because I'm not going to use them anyhow, but I'll have you know there are dozens, if not hundreds, of organizational templates floating out there. 

The blogs also contain photographs.  Many, many photographs of precisely organized closets and cupboards and shoes and dinnerware and dog leashes and -- well, you get the point.  They're fascinating for a read or two, and then they give me the willies. Too much like a navy submarine or a prison camp.  Life is for flinging your elbows out and knocking the occasional valuable crystal pitcher off the kitchen table, where it wouldn't have been in the first place if you'd followed that template.  But then you wouldn't have had the notion to fling your elbows around, to make new space, to express your native exuberance.

Organization?  Not so much.  Space for exuberance?  Yes, indeed.   And at my house, my friends, that's the point.