Going in Circles

Earlier this month, I wrote about the cyclical nature of seasonal employment. Despite realizing that switching between two jobs and lifestyles each year is a process not dissimilar to going through the complete cycle of grief biannually, this go-around, I'm having trouble adjusting. When I mentioned how odd I was finding this fall's transition back to working from home, my friend Sarah pointed out that this might just be because there's nothing "new" about the transition. 

While this was my second summer at the museum, I'm used to my summers repeating themselves. It's what I've done in the winter that's been different every single year since I graduated college. This is the first time in a long time that my life has completely repeated itself over the course of an entire year. I'm literally going in circles.

This is not a bad thing. But it's a little disorienting.

"Didn't I just go past that rock last October?"

Granted, the museum's only just closed on Sunday and this is actually my first "normal workday" morning that I've spent at home. Still, some things have changed around here. For instance, just yesterday morning I had a desk.

(Granted, it's not really my desk. For one thing it's a table. For another, it actually belongs to Andy's mother.)

Now? Not so much.

Let's look closer at what's going on here. What once contained some houseplants, reference books, notebooks, stationary and a laptop, suddenly sprouted a desktop computer, a ginormous printer/scanner/copier, and many, many more piles of, um, "files" yesterday afternoon. 

While I've complained about my less than tidy desk before, it's really the winter months when desk space is most at a premium around here. Because during the off-season I work a few hours a week for the historical society that operates the museum, I end up adopting several pieces of office equipment on a seasonal basis for a couple reasons: 1) so it doesn't freeze in the museum 2) to avoid spending half my day transferring files.

There are about a gazillion things I could spend this first morning working from home doing. But something tells me, if I don't get this clutter straightened out, I'll spend the day going in circles. And while, I might feel fine about going in circles annually, during a work day "going in circles" is really just code for "spinning your wheels."

Can you work in clutter? What do you do to make transitions easier?