Sunday afternoon I started searching for a couple of things in a desk drawer that I knew I could put my hands on pretty quickly.
Or at least I thought I could.
To me, they are significant because of my involvement in an organization that I have been part of more than 3½ decades. When I searched for the first 10 minutes or more, I failed to locate them.
I just knew they had to be in that drawer but they weren’t to be found on that initial search.
My looking was interrupted by something that was much more important and I didn’t get to resume the search until later Sunday night.
I searched only a brief time before deciding to just wait until the following morning and surely I would find them then.
After all, I knew they had to be in that desk somewhere, and most probably in that drawer where I had been focusing my search.
Come Monday morning around 7:30 I resumed searching. I’m not sure about other people, but when I start looking for something that to me seems very important, it bugs me until I can find it.
I continue to dwell on it. I usually begin working at this computer around 7:30 each morning or before. So as I was starting to work, I also continued the search since the computer sits on the desk where I was looking in the drawer.
Sure enough, shortly before 8, I found them. They were together, like I thought I had placed them, and right under my nose, just had to move something I hadn’t moved in my search.
But this search for those two items made me realize that if I would toss things I don’t need or have any use for any longer, I would have located them a lot quicker.
This time I wasn’t worried that they were lost. It was just frustrating I couldn’t find them more easily.
Which leads me really to the point of all of this.
If I would just take a little bit of time, beginning this week, and continuing each week to go through drawers, closets and other places and toss things I no longer need, it most likely would make life a little more simple.
I’m such a sentimentalist, I believe, that it’s difficult to do that.
But I’m resolved to make a faithful attempt at it and see what happens.