Colored paperclips

I can spin out over completely unimportant details, especially when life feels too big or too fast or too much out of my control. This morning I sat down at my desk and noticed the colored paperclips had spilled into one another’s clearly-defined areas. So, naturally, I spent 20 minutes putting them back where they belonged.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with order. I’m a fan. However, sometimes, I focus on order at the expense of learning from disorder. Both have something to teach me. I need to learn when is the season for pausing to reorganize and when is the season for moving through the immediate mess to get to something else.

This weekend has been a little stressful. There are professional and personal things that are outside of my perceived control….constant decisions to make without all the data that I wish I had. Maybe it’s ok to take a minute to fixate on paperclips. Or maybe it’s me avoiding the chance to meditate on tolerating ambiguity.
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So I moved one paperclip back to where it seemed to want to be. That’s where I’m starting.

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