Small Victory Against Entropy and Inertia
Saturday, November 7th, 2015
When you move, boxes that remain unopened for more than a month often never get opened. When we settled into the cozy cottage in 1998, I shoved several leg-bruisers as heavy as boulders into the closet of my study (aka home office). These contained much of my writing: drafts, sources, correspondence.
Since then, I reorganized the study after my cancer bout and after I left academia, but piecemeal. This time, I decided to go all the way to the roots so that I’m ready for the grand venture slated to officially start in a few days (T minus 10 and counting). I took this opportunity to not only organize and streamline my study, but to also tuck straggler books into niches that make sense. It took about a week, with stops to accommodate the grumblings of the fibromyalgia, and four huge sacks of paper hit the recycling bin.
It’s done now, and I feel inordinately pleased about it. I deem it fitting that I finished on the year anniversary of the publication of the Mixon report, another milestone in organizing science fiction for the greater good. The new configuration is airy, functional and hip-friendly. Entropy will make its steady stealthy inroads. But small achievements count, and I can finally cross off the longest-standing item on my to-do list.