Progress, more or less

I tackled my study this afternoon. An empty file cabinet is in my car, ready to go to school. (Some people put their stuff in the garage. My car is my garage.) Various piles of library books are now consolidated on a shelf that used to combine a few books and assorted piles of papers. The piles of paper (from that shelf and others) are consolidated into two boxes: one for current bills and other fairly current documents To Be Dealt With, and the other for research-related photocopies, notebooks, conference handouts, and gods-know-what. I also have a box of Stuff To Put Somewhere Else and a box that has been here for some time, containing office supplies, Stuff That Used To Be On My Desk Till Basement Cat Messed With It, and more gods-know-what. I will have to do something about all these boxes. The irony of removing a filing cabinet only to wind up with a cardboard box looking suspiciously like Stuff To Be Filed is not lost on me. But I'd like to find out what projects this Stuff was from or intended for.

I also read through my Kalamazoo paper again, making a few notes about editing and fleshing out. I'm not supposed to work on that one yet. I have another thing to finish first. But I liked that paper, and reading it made me feel like I have ideas. Then I started reading through the last print-out of the current project, which already has notes, some of which are already incorporated into the latest document, but today dealing with paper felt more manageable than dealing with the computer. I like working on the computer, but sometimes paper and ink feel far more friendly.

I'm hoping that this will create forward momentum for all the other tasks. In the meantime, my latest motto is this: two steps forward and one back is still forward progress.