I'm currently out of town at a conference, so the weekly post may be somewhat delayed due to scarcity of free internet access at our fancy hotel.  If nothing else, I'll upload this week's post when I return home at the end of the week.

I've been sticking with the book I found in the library, It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys, feverishly digging through a cardboard box full of every journal I've ever owned to find the elusive blank notebook.  I found one, an old black Mead "Grad" composition book, not like the marble ones I started with in my Harriet the Spy days but a college-ruled one of the variety I obsessed over in high school.  Perfect.  In it I began to complete the writing exercises in It's Hard to Make a Difference as studiously as if I were on one of my regular spurs of inspiration to learn a new language or to pick up the piano.

Though it's been difficult lately, I'm interested in keeping my heart in this self-help book, this time, because it seems to speak to my particular situation in a way no other has come close to doing.

For one, It's Hard to Make a Difference tries to debunk the myth that creative people, including visual artists, are inherently disorganized, their chaos somehow feeding their inspiration.  This is a familiar image.  The professors and visual artists I respected most in college existed in tiny basement offices, surrounded by dusty stacks of books, desks piled high with papers, old rickety shelves and file cabinets, student work mixed with their own and balanced upon any spare real estate they could find.  Many of the most powerful role models in my professional life suffer from overwork and lack of order in their workspace, a plague that only serves to perpetuate the idea that visionary, influential people necessarily exist in a whirlwind of chaos.

For those of us who find this claustrophobic and stiling in their own space, there is hope.  Organization does not always equal unoriginal, uninspired.  For the first time, I am connecting leisure time and creative work with organization and neatness.  All this time, I have blamed my busy schedule for my lack of initiative.  As it turns out the problem is, as with so many things, that I cannot get my life in order.

After tallying up the financial, emotional, professional, and creative (new addition duly noted) toll of my inability to reign in my mental disarray, I'm ready to commit to change.  It takes me months to deposit checks to my bank account, and I've misplaced them completely more than once.  For someone earning 105% of the poverty line, this raises a big red flag. I feel I will never attain true direction or productivity in my creative work until I get organized.  Every day I feel tormented by clutter, projects unfinished, plans never realized, and it keeps me from indulging in meaningful projects outside of my job.

Little by little, I am trying and working and making slow progress.  I really want this to be the "once and for all" that begins a change in course.  There have been many "once and for all" turning points, though, so I need to keep my optimism in check and remember to be a little hard on myself, knowing good intentions have never gotten me anywhere in terms of my disorder.

I will write on another topic next week, but expect this to be a subject revisited in coming Words + Images posts as I explore the relationship between creativity and disarray.  Also, I am interested to know: do you feel a sense of chaos in your daily affairs and your workspace?  How does this affect your capacity to reach your creative potential?  Feel free to visit the comments section of this page to let me know what you think.

Frustrating days happen.

On this particular evening, I made a positive decision to quit stalking angrily around the house and walk to the library. Walking has always calmed me, mellowing my mood with each footstep I seal against the pavement. No matter what, a solid walk always injects a certain feeling of openness into my chest, drawing my breath toward the sky.

I've always loved to lose myself in the library, hiding away in a corner and running my hand over the uneven rows and columns of spines, delighting in the unlikely juxtaposition of subject matter in the nonfiction section: knitting, wine, bathroom remodeling, crafty handbags. Somewhere in this odd commingling of volumes my fingertips come to rest upon a book titled It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys.

This title describes me in such an essential way I have to pick it up. It is full of language-based exercises such as making lists, thinking of life in terms of straightforward descriptions. I figure it's worth a try since I'm certainly not going to complete the series of visualization exercises in 4 Weeks to an Organized Life.

While I'm in the library my husband calls to ask what sort of soda he should buy at the store: root beer, cream soda, or berry lemonade. I debate sending a text message from the lobby after I've checked out this new book along with a copy of Stitch and Bitch, but think better of it. He can figure it out. I still need to walk.

My brisk yet meandering journey leads me down Union Avenue, past Formstone and brick and cedar shingle houses. The city possesses a nourishing beauty I can see and hear and breathe as my feet put square after square of sidewalk behind me. When I walk alone I see through the lens of Writer and Photographer, my mind constantly cataloging snippets of images, words, phrases. Rough, weathered brick; crumbling stone surrounding an archway of rusted steel; a clamoring bell urging railroad gates to lower into place as the Light Rail slides into the station; Dick Cheney's face in blue stencil on the sidewalk under the JFX; the cool, dark underside of the expressway contrasting the cars speeding along hot asphalt overhead.

Suddenly there is a young hipster girl in front of me carrying a green bike with one tire removed. The bike is carelessly draped across her back and she is walking briskly, her t-shirt soaked through with sweat. I tuck this away in my memory, too: her damp, almost-black curls barely held in check by her headband; her determined stride, powered by lean muscles concealed beneath the soft, milky skin of her thighs; the careless ease with which she carries the bike frame on her petite body.

Hipster Girl is still walking, starting up the hill toward Druid Hill Park when I turn toward home. I wonder where she is going with that half-dismantled bike, whether she is a figment of my imagination. Eventually I come up out of the valley and resurface on our street, my shirt damp from sweat, my feet passing under familiar sycamores.