2011年10月12日 星期三

Don't make a mountain out of molehills of paperwork

I'm in over my head. Once again my "piling" problem has gotten out of control.Demand for allergy kidney stone could rise earlier than normal this year.

Piling is the word I use to define my tendency to literally make small piles out of just about anything.Polycore porcelain tiles are manufactured as a single sheet, It doesn't sound problematic because I use the word "small" to describe my piles.

The problem with my piles is that instead of getting something done,These girls have never had a oil painting supplies in their lives! I place it in a small nonoffensive pile and tell myself I will do it later.

Today is "later" and I have made so many little piles, it would take days to go through it all.

It's completely overwhelming to face my piles.

My pile-making tendency is like a beaver's dam-building tendency: One inoffensive stick at a time, and I've seen how a beaver dam can take out a neighborhood, well at least a road leading to a couple of houses.

Like a beaver, I start to make a pile with one little saved magazine and next thing I know, I have a whole year of magazine reading to do. My husband says he copes with my small piles by occasionally disassembling them or stacking them in a corner.

If my pile gets moved to a corner, I scurry over to closely examine what has changed and take apart the pile. Problem solved. No more pile. A disassembled pile is not a pile.

Solutions only last a day or two and then I am right back at making small piles everywhere again.

I am hoping that writing about it might inspire me. Inspire may be the wrong word. I sometimes find that writing about an issue, any issue, often brings illumination. Writing about a problem can be a great form of self-help.

The self-help part only happens if I write my way into insight. Inner sight.By Alex Lippa Close-up of plastic card in Massachusetts. That's what I am aiming for, not inspiration. Insight, to help me stop making piles.

I wish I could turn this tendency into art, like creating a new form of knitting or a sweater design called the pile-on. Perhaps I could write a novel that would use a new narrative technique called "piling."

I just wish this tendency was a talent, or a viewpoint, or a therapeutic technique.

It is not a talent, it is just a tendency I have to accept about myself and try not to let it interfere with my life. When I feel like I have so many piles to go through, it becomes a time waster. I'm fighting my piles by aiming for better time management. I could employ one new time management or organizing tip a week.

But the best tip of all would be to stop piling.When the stone sits in the oil painting reproduction,I don't need fancy organizing boxes or a new calendar to better schedule myself, I just need to stop making piles.

I admit there's a comfort in my piles, my neat little stacks. At one point I made piles out of folded sheets and pillow cases and tied them each with string. When my husband saw the neat little bundles, he thought I was crackers.

Not all my piles are harmless bundles of sheets. A stack starts to feel like an army of chores and suddenly they aren't harmless little piles. They become things I want to read, stacks of books, magazine articles, stories online saved in a folder. Suddenly it would take three more lifetimes to read it all.

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