« lesson learned | Main | a very sad moses day »
August 15, 2007
when a recovered hoarder finds an old hoard...
(moses is a lot better this morning, by the way... moving about the house, eating, and sleeping real sleep. no insulin this morning and we'll be cutting way back for a few days.)
i think my transition from hoarder to non-hoarder has been so gradual that i never truly thought of myself as a hoarder until yesterday. a pack rat, one with low standards when it came to organization and cleanliness, a reluctance to add to landfills... sure, i would think of my past self in that way. but not as a bona-fide hoarder.
so yesterday i was cleaning out the drawer in my desk at work where i'd stashed office supplies. i used to be an administrative assistant-- someone who wielded the power to order anything from the office supply catalog. exotic hot pink post-its? sure, i could get those for you, or i knew someone who could. that special kind of pen you like? let me whip out a purchase order form.
but then, after a while, i wasn't an admin any more, and i lost that power. and apparently, that's when i started hoarding pens.
pens are small. you can hoard a lot of them without really noticing. i would say that i pulled a couple hundred out of my desk, most of them functional. tested each one and decided if i was keeping it or not. and i really had to convince myself that it was okay to not have a big stash of pens in my desk. i've had those pens for years... i've never needed them in all this time... and i work in a big office, i'm never going to not be able to find a pen.
because that's why i had them. what if i need a pen, and can't get one? WTF? there's no logic there. only hoarder logic.
Posted by lisa at August 15, 2007 01:17 PM
Comments
Around my house I can never find a pen when I want one ...
I'm a hoarder, too, but I hoard things even more useless than pens ...
Posted by: Lisa B on August 15, 2007 03:20 PM
And then half the time, the ink dries out while it's sitting around not being used, so when you actually do go to grab a pen, you have to scribble with five of them before you get one that works.
I've done well with my workplace stuff over the years; We use so little paper anymore than I hardly need pen and paper - and file folders - I have a drawer full of complete empty ones, because we don't print anything out anymore.
Posted by: Steph Mineart on August 15, 2007 04:51 PM
ok, so a) your comment won't post right away because i have to approve it first and b) you might get a server error but your comment probably posted anyway and c) previewing doesn't work so i've removed the preview button.