Clutter
Sometime last week, my mother got all over me about the amount of clothes I have in my closet. I have no idea why this is, as it is she who buys all that shit. Regardless, I cleaned the shit out and I’m happier for it.
As I was going about the rest of my day, I decided it would be a good idea to start filling out college applications. It was determined that I would apply to colleges in order of likelihood of rejection, so I opened up the app that the folks at Harvard College were so kind to send me. As I was scanning the completed first page, I noticed an instruction at the top: “Type or write in black ink only.” Guess what colour pen I was using? Unless you thought something stupid like “A yellow gel pen,” you have a 50/50 chance of getting this right. Further hint: it wasn’t red. Being so fucked (”so” not being used as a discription of degree, but rather in it’s meaning as “truthfully”), I printed off copies of all 4 apps I needed to fill out. When this was completed, I was too weary to fill any of them out, so I determined to put them away. The desk being home to much in the the way of junk, I had to add it to the smaller, less mature dross-heap on my bedside table, where it can be overshadowed by the Mountain of Yet-to-be-read Books.
I realized that I have too much clutter in my life, and it would help me immensely if I tidied everything up for this last year in High School. Come, embark with me on my journey into clarity, efficiancy, and order (by clicking “More”).
The most obvious realm of clutter in my life is the bookmarks menu in Firefox. Even with the vast number bookmarks filed in folders, there is about twice as much material loose in the list. I shall clean up this list by organizing all needed marks and deleting extrainious archiving. For comparison purposes, this is the list of bookmarks on my computer, and this is the list called “bookmarks” that is itself the product of a cleanup (albeit one born of a computer crash.)
One of the biggest space-hogs in the bookmarks folder is articles and forum threads from The Straight Dope. These are getting foldered, as did all of those Wikipedia articles that got stuffed into a folder called “Neat Wikipedia Articles.” So is “Neat Dope” born!
There was a folder named quotes, it had one bookmark in it. So I killed it.
I’ve got a bunch of links on heraldry/nobility, that can all go in one folder. (Found a stray Wiki link in the process.) Also included links about my heritage, and Druidism.
Sounds like a good idea to categorize the Misc. Religion ones, too.
Etc. (I’m not going to bore you with the details.)
In that mess of links, there were 5 no-longer-existent pages, as well as 3 pairs of repeated pages.
My bookmarks dropdown now looks like this. I know I failed to actually purge much, and that alot of this stuff is even more difficult to find now, but I think I’ll leave it at that.
READING:
I obviously have much reading-related clutter. Just look at the heading “Reading list” in the link files above. In addition to this, I have the physical stack of books on my night-stand. This will be emptied out at the normal rate. I am also in possession of a stack of print-outs of blog posts that I meant to read. (”What? What could you be spending so much time on the internet doing if it isn’t reading or working on your website?” I have no idea.) I’m going through these today (4 articles, ~50 pages), reading, enjoying, and throwing away.
TASKS:
I’m a student, and thus have little free time (that summer thing, when I’m not employed, seems to slip away with me not having done much of anything for this site). What projects I do want to do in my free time tend to not get done because I’m a lazy fuck. So, I plan on turning to the Printable CEO to help me organize those tasks I want to undertake that have finite ends (unlike, say, my May Day Mystery research.) Perhaps I can use the online version to help me reduce the clutter caused by ridding my to-do list of its clutter. Did I mention I’m creating a solid to-do list?
The amount of half-finished work I have is astounding. I have not 1, not 2, but seven drafts saved on WordPress (including this one). I’ve got to crank these out, as they are clutter. Clutter also includes the unfinished wargames, and stories bouncing around in my skull. It’s all clutter, it all must be dealt with.
Miscellaneous tasks include signing up for del.icio.us, learning how to take full advantage of Google docs for school/senior project (I already figured out I can use it to turn Word .doc’s into .pdf’s, thus obviating the need to use WordPerfect), actually inputing data into MyProgress.com, and seeking out the ladies (thus letting my check the “Romance” box and make this article part of every current category.)
Thus, I have said all that I can say about clutter, and now I’m off to finish painting the foundation of my house.