Writing Makes Me Want to Be An English Teacher

I'm frantically digging through the mass of stacked papers on my desk at work, and my fingers catch on a metal spoon stuck to a post-it note message: DON’T FORGET TO SEND FRIDAY. I take a moment to clean my desk.

I think I used that spoon last Wednesday, and the only thing the post-it note is stuck to is my calculator. I throw stacks of papers into the recycling bin, stack others in a “neat” to-do pile for this week, store others in wire “to-do later” shelf, and take my spoon to the kitchen.

I usually do this on Friday afternoons. That way, come Monday morning, my desk is “neat,” and I’m ready to answer my 43 emails received over the weekend. I’m not a very organized person. I usually say I am in job interviews and strength-listing social situations, but I’m really not. I always meet deadlines and I will never lose your work request. There is a running priorities list on a yellow legal pad next to my computer (there’s probably two or three additional, similar lists in various small legal pads and on the back of the Annual Luncheon PowerPoint draft, but the one next to my monitor is the most up-to-date). 

I’m messy. It’s a fact. My car serves as my second home, my laundry hamper, a garbage can, and a storage unit. My house looks similar to Jon and Kate’s before the money (and nanny and maid). And the divorce.

I’ve been living out of a laundry basket of clean clothes for a week and half. Brett finally washed last Thursday’s dishes on Saturday. I’m over-committed and constantly in a hurry. I’m trying to figure out how to both coach a volleyball tournament in St. Francis and attend my cousin’s bachelorette party in Edina on Friday night. I finally put gas in my car on Friday when I coasted into the Casey’s across from work—I wasn’t even planning on stopping until I realized I was literally running on fumes. I haven’t been able to find my black flats in three weeks.

Part of me wants to get back into tutoring or teaching English. Most of me knows I don’t have time for that right now. There are recipes I need to try out, Christmas plans to decide, plays I want to try out for, plays I want to direct, friends I want to visit, and books I want to read.

Eventually, I will catch my fingers on some metaphorical spoon in my life and be forced to slow down and organize.