CLeaning up my “one step back.” Or, if you’re not my fan wish me ill. No matter which it is for you today I hope to get a good grip on my near daily “one step back” which always seem to seriously deduct from my “two steps forward.” Ms Kondo has a point. Clutter is mentally distracting, inefficient and sometimes a hazard. Since I made use of the inheritance from my Mother to transform our dingy attic into an office where I could put 68 years and more of the documents I’ve been unwilling to dispose of I’ve been trying to organize them. I know now that I’ll be doing it until I die…..roughly thirty years from now. I’ve always planned to live to be 100. My biggest long term challenge will be to fend off Alzheimers which took my Mother fifteen years after creeping into her creativity.
Like many people I have so many projects its hard to put them away before I start the next. I’ve been fighting various piles of paper for years in my office and tucked them away only to pull out more papers from what has been filed to create more clutter. A year ago
I began a final (first of more yet to come no doubt) to clean up what existed in preparation to write some books that I’ve long threatened to compose. Through that year I’ve also harbored the desire to tie them to yet campaigns for public office both the School Board and the Congress. Poor Claudia.
If I am elected to serve in November on the Duluth School Board I have several goals the first of which will be to find a trustworthy as well as competent Superintendent. I fully expect to serve a full four year term…….because my next campaign will be very unlikely to elevate me to a higher office. But, as anyone recalling my last year’s campaign will recall, I ran against Pete Stauber only because some Republican who saw Donald Trump for the danger that he was needed to run if for no other reason than to prevent such a stain on the Party of Lincoln. I am tempted to do the same thing next year in the 2020 election only far more vigorously than I did last year with my French studies and plans to visit he battlefields my Grandfather fought over 100 years after he was shot to hell.
Both this school board and my putitive 4th Congressional campaign will be unorthodox. For each I plan to write a book. The first of these for the School Board will be written to raise money for my campaign. It will be a book about what 68 years has taught me about education. It will be eccentric, personal and hopefully remind people that I still consider myself a teacher…..of the public if not of students in the classroom. BUT i’VE GOT TO CLEAN UP THIS CLUTTER IF i’M GOING TO DO THAT AND START ON A SECOND BOOK FOR A CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN.
So here is today’s task. I’ve just repiled my clutter on the floor and moved it around to vacuum. These are the miscellaneous piles with a brief description of what they are to me:
This is the easiest pile. Its mostly books which I’ve been perusing. The difficulty is that I’m running out of book shelf space.
This is the debris that has accumulated around my computer over the last few months. I should be able to toss a lot of it after combing through it for a few precious gems.
These are mostly long term writing projects for me that are on hold. They need more careful filing so that, if I resume them, I can find them when I need to.
This collection sits on my Mother’s old file cabinet for her Art work and materials. Its mostly got materials related to the story of my Grandfather that I’ve been wanting to write for years. His example would be a good one to tell a troubled America – the poor little rich kid of nations about how to reorient itself to play a part in saving the world from turning into a massive Red Tide of human destruction.
If I get past my first book and turn toward Congress next year this will be brought back out.
Finally there is this little collection which is not litter.
It is French materials which I’ve collected to help me learn French. Over the past 475 days I’ve only taken a break from my studies of the language for the 30 days I was actually in France. Like my politics I’m being stubborn about it. Its dratted hard to learn to read AND speak and understand it being spoken. Its also a reminder to me of how I value both dedication and education. Its also a goad to me to fight off Alzheimers as two languages seem to be a good defense against it as well as constant learning and brain flexing. There’s just not enough of that going on among some elected officials.
