Look, a new day...

…has begun. [Apologies for the Cats reference…]

After my stay in the hospital for my recent heart opportunity, it was decided that it might be best that I not over-exert myself by going up and down the stairs to my study. (We converted the attic into my study years ago in preparation for our son being born and needing a bedroom of his own.)

And so I called a couple of friends to help me move my laptop, monitor, and laser printer downstairs to the dining room table. My Lovely First Wife thought it was a terrible idea, clogging our formal dining area like that, but I pointed out that we were not going to be inviting people to dinner any time soon, and that the whole set up was temporary.

So it has proven to be. Last week I double-checked with the cardiac rehab boss and was told that as far as he was concerned I was clear to resume stair-climbing. I almost asked him to put that in writing for my worrywart Lovely First Wife, but mirabile dictu she believed me. Mostly.

My first task was to tackle that study table. There was still a whole bunch of stuff on it, and frankly I had not cleaned it since it moved up there back in the 1980s. It was filthy, as you can imagine: dust, grime, a spill or two that somehow escaped notice. Everything had to come off the table, of course, so that I could scour it.

Which I did, which resulted in this now-historical photograph:

It hints at the extraordinary chaos just out of frame, but let’s not talk about that just now.

Yesterday I moved everything back up except the laser printer, but the aforementioned son was available to lug it back upstairs. By suppertime it was reimagined.

I took this opportunity to rethink where things went, and although most items returned to their accustomed place, more than a few found new, more efficient spots.

Here’s the “new day” referenced in the title: Dragging stuff off the table became an archæological exercise. I found tons of files, notebooks, WASTE BOOKS, for projects that I should have finished at some point in the past if not for Lichtenbergian TASK AVOIDANCE, plus a ton of materials whose projects were completed but which I never reshelved/filed.

I organized all the flotsam according to its destiny — file, shelve, toss, or schedule — and that’s what you’re seeing in the second photo. To the left of the monitor you can see a desktop rack for folders, and those are the projects that I will be tackling over the next couple of months.

What kind of projects, you ask? Here’s the project I decided to start with, a string quartet that I wrote 40 years ago, the only relic of which I have is a dot-matrix printout of the individual parts of the first movement, and a laser-printed score of the second movement. It will boost my input skills in Dorico, if nothing else. It will be interesting to see whether I find it cromulent enough to finish a third and/or a fourth movement.

All of this of course is in addition to the projects that I already have on my plate (the BugVerse Chronicles, the pas de deux for Southern Arc, the Backstreet &…Zine). I’ll keep you posted on What Happens Next.