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Note #63: Clean slate (2011.8.13)

I have the spent the past week putting things in order and getting myself ready for life after the Dis. Most of it has been housekeeping things that I wanted to get done but had put aside. I did manage to clean off my desk, which took longer than I thought it would. Here’s what my desk looked like before I tackled it.

Not only did I want to clear all the papers off my desk, but I wanted to deal with the books as well. Most of the books in that photo above deal with the trickster, and to be honest I don’t really want to have to look at those every time I sit down at my desk.

But first I had to take care of all the papers. Some of those piles were pretty easy to deal with—photocopies of Korean tales and trickster tales from around the world went straight into the appropriate boxes, where they will stay until I need them again. The other piles, though, took a lot longer to get through. By the time I got down to the bottom of some of those piles, I was looking at papers that had been on my desk literally for years, now yellowed with age. Most of these papers represented intermediate stages in the Dis, and looking through them was like stepping into a time machine. But I no longer needed the vast majority of them, and the ones I did not need went into a growing pile that would be recycled. It was quite cathartic.

Once the papers were cleared off, I took all the books off as well and gave the desk a thorough cleaning. Then some of the books went back on—mostly reference books—while the rest were relegated to my bookshelves. In their place I put books that I have wanted to read or will need in the near future. And then, after spending most of the day on this project, I was done.

It may seem a bit silly to post about cleaning my desk, but I am going to be away for a little while, and I wanted to write something before I left. There are other things I could have talked about, I suppose, but I didn’t really want to get into anything too deep. Like I said last time, there are plenty of things that I want to write about here, but I think those can wait until I get back. The new semester will be starting soon, and I will be getting back into a rhythm of sorts, and then I can hopefully breathe some new life into this site.

See you in about a week and a half.

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