BABY STEPS

Papers and publications that I want to be sure don’t get lost go on our coffee table in the living room or my desk in the family room. The stacks can get a little high.

The coffee table always includes the TV remote, my guide to our cable channels, a coaster waiting for a beverage to be enjoyed and framed pictures of our two grandchildren. It is usually littered with the local, weekly newspaper, current magazines plus books I’m reading and those waiting to be read. Some of the novels on the list for our book club are so uninteresting to me that I keep another one going at the same time so I can switch when my attention wanes. An invitation to a social event goes there. too. They always arrive well in advance and may need to be consulted several times before we attend.

My desk contains the usual office supplies plus book-ends holding the two-volume set of The World Book Dictionary. I also keep notes and news items for possible use with my blog. Somewhere in the mélange is information regarding writers’ groups I belong to and anything connected with my published memoir, “The View from a Midwest Ferris Wheel.”

I don’t get as much done in a day as I used to. Instead of a big cleaning once a week, I cut the piles one thing at a time–it doesn’t leave a gap. I am reminded of my favorite Bill Murray move, What About Bob? The comedian was the obsessive-compulsive, neurotic patient intruding on the vacation of his successful psychotherapist played by Richard Dreyfuss. Murray’s line, “baby steps,” was the way to change anything. That has stuck in my mind. I console myself that I’m taking “baby steps” to a neat house.

Do you have a project that you need to approach with “baby steps?”