Getting Back in the Groove
I've been on leave all last year on a fellowship, and so I'm coming into the academic year a little bit more wistfully than usual this time around. It's hard to let go of that fellowship year!!!

But I must.

I spent seven hours in my office yesterday and about six hours today rearranging furniture, reorganizing, decorating, cleaning, and pretty much reclaiming my office after a year away.

I'd left things less organized than usual after a grueling spring semester and intense four-week summer session prior to starting my year off and leaving town. Plus, I'd inherited a second filing cabinet and another bookcase due to the retirement of two long-time professors. I was thrilled to have additional storage for books and files, but they were rather unceremoniously dumped all willy nilly and awkwardly in my office according to the directions of the departmental secretary (who hates my guts) while I was out of the country. (Plus, I had a scanner delivered to my office--the belated result of a tech fellowship--at around the same time, so there was this enormous scanner box clogging up the works as well.)

Add to that the fact that during my absence the visiting professor ensconced in my office, in addition to mucking up my computer, made a huge mess of everything. Needless to say, it was a total shambles, and I'd been dreading (dreading!!) getting everything up and running again.

So I've completely rearranged all the furniture (cleverly creating a little cubby for the computer desk through strategic placement of the new bookshelf as a sort of room divider); removed a disgusting rug I inherited from the prior occupant that was too big and much too powder blue and just plain fucking filthy blow job--replacing it with a couple smaller, more modern area rugs; put up some artwork and imported a few decorative items from home; replaced dead plants with new, living plants; and sorted through tons of folders and piles of paper and got rid of a lot of junk, then revamped my filing system. (The filing will be an ongoing project, but at least now everything's put away in the filing cabinets and I can figure out how to locate it.)

And now I love my "new" office! It feels like someplace that I want to be, and, more importantly, it finally feels usable again. I'm feeling much less overwhelmed now, and I'm starting to finally get that excited anticipation for the new semester . . . that shiny, happy fall Back to School feeling! I'm actually looking forward to my classes!

Or of course, maybe I'm just pleased because the visiting professor's out of my office and I've symbolically gone and peed in all the corners and reclaimed my territory.

Really . . . it could go either way.