All I want for Christmas is a little chaos in my life

My desk is clean and neat. Everthing I need to find, I can find within seconds. Everything has its place.

The bills are paid. The house is neat. The bed is made.

I’ve done all my Christmas shopping and there are three whole days left before Christmas. I haven’t wrapped them all yet, but I have a little elf (my step-daughter, Elinor) who has volunteered for the task. Bottom line, I’m prepared for Christmas.

My emails are pretty much under control. The spam lies waiting for deletion in the appropriate folder. Again, I can find pretty much anything I need to on my Mac in a matter of seconds.

And I am miserable.

Why would that be? Isn’t this the ideal state we all seek to achieve in life? Aren’t we all buying books, organizers and attending seminars to learn how we can create a neat and orderly existence for ourselves?

I don’t know about you, but for me this is disastrous.

I like to be more busy. To have multiple things going on at the same time. I like to be planning for big things that I am not possibly prepared to do because I WANT to do them. I like having to rush from one thing to the next, barely making it there on time (but never late… I hate being late).

My problem is that I put all my eggs into one basket without a backup plan, and now I’m in planning and preparation mode but at a time of the year where it’s extremely difficult to be in execution mode.

But this too shall pass.

I will return to my beloved days of a messy desk, with piles of paper I haven’t gotten to yet. With business cards unprocessed that will probably never be databased, but used when I have to reach that person.

I will return to my messy, disorganized email inbox with dozens of unresponded to emails. To having to spend open time on a Sunday afternoon weeding through my email discerning what’s important, what’s not and acting upon what is.

My goal for 2007 is to return to the Andy of old: spacy and forgetful, yes, disorganized, yes, but somehow despite all the chaos, pulling it off. Making things happen.

So you might have thought I was going to review “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder - how crammed closets, cluttered offices and on-the-fly-planning make the world a better place” since I have the book cover at the top of this missive for today.

Fact is, I’ve glanced through it. Read the opening pages. I like what I’ve seen thus far. But I haven’t read the book.

But it looks fabulous. I think I’m going to like it and plan on reading it over the holidays.

So if you, like me, are a closet disorganized person (or a person with a disorganized closet), you might want to order a copy from Amazon and do the same. It might be a great way to bide your time through the holidays and feel a little better about yourself while surrounded by wadded up Christmas wrapping, uneaten fruitcake and kids zoned out in front of the TV because they can’t figure out anything else to do with their time.

And smile despite it all. We slobs are not so bad.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,

Andy