PO Box 333 
Concerning the Filing of Papers
by Mary Reynolds Thompson
Never, in all my career of fretting about this and that, did I imagine the worries that could arise concerning the filing of papers.
Papers torn from notebooks, handed out at workshops, copied from articles, cut from magazines, printed off the Internet. Papers crammed into files, fed into folders, squeezed into cabinets, three-hole punched into binders, labeled "Good Ideas" and "Poems and Stuff" and "Coaching Tips" and "For the Book" and "Miscellaneous." Papers regarding matters such as poetry and creative writing, and how to put on a workshop, build a business, market products, become a coach, write for magazines, discover your niche, be successful, explore your soul, develop a spiritual practice, live your life purpose, make money doing what you love, and even - how to cook a turkey.
No one told me there would be days when I would be brought to tears by the simple task of finding the e-mail address of a prospective client, or a quote I absolutely had to have for a chapter on longing for the book that I'm writing, which, by the way, has two binders of its own. Or that the mere suggestion of "Why don't you try and get a little more organized?" gently proffered by my adoring husband would flood me with a wild rage more common among people embarking on a bloody battle than cleaning up their offices.
Never would I have thought that paper, that lovely neutral material, suddenly would have become my enemy – a type of mad virus with no known cure, a mutant, malicious strain of Papericitus that would expand its hold on me with each passing day.
Yet, looking at these pulsating piles of paper, climbing like ivy across bookshelves, spilling like curled lettuce leaves from the edges of binders, and nesting in desk drawers among the paperclips and pens, I cannot help but feel a welling-up of some private pride. For deep inside, I know that the rich, creative, eclectic cornucopia of all those pages is, in some way, the perfect reflection of me, a woman, quite frankly, who is no longer content to be neatly filed away.
