Retirement Has Led to a Landfill Home Office
But should I feel guilty?
Don’t jump to conclusions — the photo above doesn’t show my home office. On the contrary, if I wanted to change myself, this office could serve as a model. For instance, notice how so many things are arranged in stacks. That reveals a sense of order and coherence missing from my landfill office.
If I tried to change, my wife would cheer me on. I’m sure when Barbara looks above the mounds to see whether I’m in there, she often imagines her orderly self packing a suitcase. She sees herself opening a door and lowering the suitcase in an empty condo that she will never furnish. But because I haven’t allowed my landfill style to metastasize into other parts of her house, she has stuck with me. We call to each other over the mounds.
As a college teacher, I was forced to resist my natural, free-form approach to books, notecards, student papers, and bluebooks.
But from childhood, I have had strong urges toward clutter. It wasn’t easy simulating the behavior of less casual faculty members in order to be granted tenure and promotions. But now that I’m a retiree and off the leash, I am more and more acting on my fundamental commitment to chaos theory.
A senior colleague of mine denied the university’s custodial staff access to his…
