The Current Rotation Drawer!
Where do you write?
It makes such a huge difference.
I’ve written a ton of places.
Coffee shops, hotel rooms, backstage.
Garages, corners, couches.
Currently I have a room.
So super grateful for it.
One thing.
It also doubles as my clothes place.
Our bedroom closet is his.
My office closet is mine.
All good - in fact preferable.
In a way dressing is part of work for me.
So it feels kind of perfect.
But there is one thing.
That little pile of clothes.
You know the one.
The pile of clothes you’re just going to wear again tomorrow anyway
That you can’t bear to put away
Just to take out again.
Just to put away.
That little ball of Sisyphusian shmatas.
Well there they always were.
I’ve really been working on organizing.
In fact my word of the year is organize.
Or organ eyes - as I wrote about here.
But whatever.
Right?
Put them away.
Or don’t.
There are projects and pandemics and parallel universes
To attend to.
But still.
And then there was the dresser.
The broke down IKEA dresser.
That the printer sits on.
Nothing against IKEA.
I have a few things I bought from the meatballers
That I love.
But this bad basic broke down dresser
Had drawers
That the face literally would not stay on.
So - not a drawer - a weird shelf.
Where a box of my QR cards sat
Demanding unnecessary attention
As they waited to be given away.
And this bureau was right across from the couch.
The couch!
I’m so grateful to have an office with couch
And not just a couch.
One I love.
Gifted from a beloved friend who was leaving town.
So I’d brig some work over from the desk.
And be working away happily
And look up.
Oh god that dresser.
And one day
I’d waited long enough.
I’d been frugal enough.
I’d been patient enough.
t was time.
And I mean
Change what you can.
So sometimes instead of doomscrolling
Or even hope scrolling
I entered bureaus into the punim book Marketplace search.
Which I remembered Lily Hayden
Had posted about furnishing her whole cool room from
And after a million messages
Which were a kind of writing job of their own
And my cool moving guy making it happen
There it was.
Yay.
Set up the printer.
It really looked so pretty
How much better was my work going to go
Without that bad mojo Malm.
I sorted through the stuff that had been in the drawers
Organized, replaced.
Took the exercise equipment off the floor.
Put it away.
Then guess what?
There was an extra drawer.
I looked around.
There was that little pile of clothes.
The current rotation pile.
And I had a little brainstorm.
The drawer
Could hide
I mean hold
This pile.
I could throw the whole thing in.
Or lightly fold and gently nestle.
Mood dependent.
So I did.
And I closed the drawer
It whispered itself shut.
And I thought
The Current Rotation Drawer.
It was all in there.
Fishnets, workout clothes.
Blouses. Bras.
All mixed together.
Because they weren’t organized by type
The way we usually organize clothes
The were organized by time.
Now.
Current rotation is so helpful in so many ways.
Projects.
Foods.
Concerns.
Things cycle in.
Cycle out.
And there’s only so much room
In the current rotation drawer.
And sure you can go to the closet.
Or the bureau.
I do.
But most of what I need most days is right there.
Put away.
In a different way.
In a timely manner,
And it’s really helped the office vibe.
Not having to face the pile.
And the questions inherent in it.
And maybe even helped
What’s happening in
The current rotation of projects.
Because putting away things
In the Current Rotation Drawer
Makes me think about the Current Rotation.
Or the current.
The flow.
And having a lot of flow where you write
It makes a huge difference.
xx
Infinitely yours>
Beth