I’m sitting down in my office for the first time in weeks. I’ve been working all sorts of other places for the last few weeks except for my office, because the office has been a downright terror and it doesn’t exactly soothe me to work in a space that has a tarp on the floor and where the empty bookshelves tell me that maybe I should spend my time unpacking the boxes still sitting by my bed and cluttering up the bedroom.

So the other day, I finally allowed myself a few minutes–literally, only allowed myself a half hour, or I’d work on it all day and accomplish nothing else–to organize the office and unpack the books. It’s amazing the difference a half hour can make. My desk is still really cluttered, but I now have 3 feet to navigate between my dresser and bed, rather than the nine inches or so I had last week, and the shelves are nice and fully (if a bit overly) packed. I ran out of paint and haven’t had the time or money to go back to fixing that one little corner yet. I still have a pile of boxes over by the closet, covered by the tarp I need to fold up and pu
t in storage. I still have a bunch of Star Wars and D&D minis I’ve been meaning to list on Ebay cluttering up my shelves, making it impossible to sort everything out by genre just yet.

But part of this cleaning up is allowing myself the zen to say "that’s okay." I mean, that I have an office at all is really rather a luxury, so I should USE it even if it’s not perfect.

I didn’t take Before pictures (did I mention I have a tiny little point and shoot camera now? it’s not great, but it’s good enough for snapshots), but I did take After pictures, which will become the Before pictures for tomorrow’s or Saturday’s next 1/2 hour of Closer to Zen. But for now, I have work to do–in my office!