7 Things My Desk Says

About me, that is. What it would probably say if given free rein is “help, I’m being buried alive!” Except, of course, for the trifling point that it is not alive, being neither made of sapient pearwood, nor belonging to someone who has refused hospitality to a French enchantress lately.

But what my desk says about me is Quite A Lot, and not all of it flattering. So here is the dirt the desk would dish: seven things one can deduce about me from my desk – or at least the top of it, because even I cannot give you a clear account of what exactly I have in the cupboard and drawers thereof (which tells you something about me all by itself).

Louis-Léopold Boilly - A Lady Seated at Her Desk - WGA02352
Lady, there is a dog on your desk. Also a small stone flasher.
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Grand Productivity Experiment: Phase Five… Oof.

Up with the rocket and down with the stick, as the saying goes. Well and truly up for Phase Four, and down, down, down for Phase Five. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a disaster – the house did not catch fire, nor did the kettle break – but it was definitely a wash-out.

I did get some things done, but in an absent-minded “oh yes, I’d better do this” kind of way. Anything which might have called for some enthusiasm to be worked up I just… didn’t do.

La Touche Lennui 1893
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Letting Go of the People You Might Have Been

I think it was the hats that finally clued me in.
I own thirteen hats, and as I walked to the yarn shop to obtain materials for the fourteenth hat, I brooded. More than that, I mused, I prayed, I meditated. On such subjects as simplicity, the significance of hats, and the wisdom or unwisdom of buying yarn for another hat.

Boy carrying hats. New York City. - NARA - 523519 cropped
And this is what I realized: the reason I have so many hats – the reason why I have trouble getting rid of any of  these hats – is that they represent the people I could be.

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