When I got to work this morning, I had so many piles on my desk, so many notes everywhere, that I couldn’t even decide how to begin. I decided I had to go through the piles, figure out what had been done, what hadn’t been done, what was really important and so on.
I spent a good part of my day going through notes, making a master list, putting my piles in order from most important to least important. As I organized, I made neat piles to my right on the side of my desk and on top of the 2 drawer filing cabinet that sits beside my desk. It was beautiful, so tidy, so useful in all its order.
I need to look something up to carry on with my process, so I opened the filing cabinet to find the folder I wanted. The filing cabinet pitched forward and tipped over, throwing my beautiful organized paperwork everywhere…everywhere! I can’t decide if it was a stupid move or a smart move to try to grab the filing cabinet as it fell (my wrist still hurts!) but my thought was if the filing cabinet hit the bookcase, the big tall bookcase and its contents would come crashing down on my head…thus I grabbed the tilting cabinet and wrenched my wrist…but on the plus side, the bookcase didn’t hit me.
My hours spent organizing paperwork were promptly undone by this disaster. My once orderly piles were now just a huge disarray that I scooped off the floor and threw on top of my desk. Sigh.
The moral of the story is that filing can harm you, possibly kill you or someone you love. Paperwork kills, man; just don’t do it.