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.