We woke up to 13 inches of snow this morning. It wasn’t a surprise. As the hours of Monday moved along, the forecast kept getting worse and worse. I think the first time I noticed the Winter Weather Advisory, it was predicting 6-10 inches. Later in the day, they raised it to 8-14. By the time I went to bed last night, they’d upped it to 12-20 inches, and we already had six inches on the ground. It started snowing around 2:30 pm yesterday and never really stopped. Last time we checked it was 16 inches at our house.

I canceled my 8 am yoga class and my 11 am therapy appointment. I probably could have made it, with my all wheel drive and snow tires, but I didn’t want to risk it. They don’t plow our neighborhood streets, (other than the few people in our neighborhood with pickups and makeshift plows who drive around for fun, making the roads more passable), so you have to make it five blocks to where they’ve worked on the roads and there were multiple cars stuck and abandoned between here and there.

Since I had a whole day with nothing on my schedule, I decided to work on organizing my office. After I meditated and wrote, I worked on it for just a bit before it became clear I needed a big breakfast if this was what I had planned for the day. I made fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, and french toast — particularly yummy and nice on such a snowy day. After that, I came back to my office and got to work. It feels like the primary things needing sorted and either removed or stored are years of accumulated paperwork, along with piles of unread magazines and books.

As I sorted today, I found some of the weirdest things. A second digital camera I didn’t even realize I had, various music players (pre-smartphones), power cords that have no mate (at least not one I know of), owner’s manuals for items I no longer own, an old bag of Greenies from back when Dexter was still alive with just one remaining, an old pair of prescription sunglasses, a collection of half eaten candy, things I’d meant to mail but didn’t, a credit card I never even bothered to activate, a sweatshirt I recently bought for one of my nieces that I didn’t realize still has an anti-theft device on it (which means I have to take it back to the store with the receipt and ask them to remove it).

Getting my office cleaned up and sorted feels necessary. The work I want to do needs a solid physical foundation, a space that is clear and open. If I clean it up and clear it out, what else wants to come in will have room to breathe. I’ve known this for a long time, even worked on it a little here and there, but with my burnout and the merging of what was in my old CSU office and what’s accumulated here over the years, it’s been hard to sustain let alone complete. Today was no different. I probably got two hours of work in, cleared some space before I couldn’t do anymore. On the surface, it doesn’t look like I did much of anything.

And that is totally okay. This is how it goes sometimes, in fits and starts, a little at a time. I’m trying to reconcile who I’ve been with who I want to become, and that’s messy. I’m pacing myself.