Squalor Wisdom

There is a fairly robust negative correlation between my apartment’s neatness and the quality of my writing, I think. The better and more creative I perceive my writing, the less of my living room apartment floor I can actually see. It took me 15 minutes for me to find a sock this morning.

Not a pair of socks.

One. Single. Sock.

Adversely, there seems to be a positive correlation between my apartment’s neatness and my life in general; the messier my apartment gets, the more messy my life seems to be. And since I’m currently looking at two empty packs of Oreo cookies consumed by A Week Ago Candice in the place of dinner, have piles of clothes separated into washed and unwashed, and lost my dog last week under a bunch of bags, I’m thinking shit has gotten pretty bad.

Or good, depending on your perspective.

This is especially frustrating for anyone that has to reach me for…anything. I’ve been extremely hard to get in touch with. My job (eek) is taking my missing the monthly (weekly? bi-weekly?) newsletter very hard, which I understand since the letter is not only chocked with news but also relevant GIFs, YouTube videos, space and science quips, and ironically irrelevant GIFs (which if we are being honest is the real tragedy here). I missed a party, a bad picture of myself over a customer comment, and the news that one of my friends is leaving for another job.

I’m missing a lot. I don’t want to miss anything, but checking an extra email account is asking a lot of a person who is pretty sure she drank spoiled almond milk this morning because she forgot to put it back in the fridge a day ago last night. Also, between all of the freelancing and submitting that I do and considering how busy the accounts that are connected them are, checking another email account will make my head implode. And since I’m positive my insurance doesn’t cover stress-induced brain melting, I had to think of something. And I did. I thought of something great. So, if you work with me anywhere and need to tell me something, these are the steps for guaranteeing your message gets to me;

1. Buy a taco.

2. Wrap the taco in the message.

3. Put the taco in the fridge.

4. Get a second taco. This will be your notification taco.

5. Wrap that with a note that says that I have a message taco waiting for me in the fridge.

6. Place that taco in my work locker.

I will get your message. But don’t expect a reply taco.

When I ran the idea by my sister she was flabbergasted by its brilliance (which I guess she expresses by laughing uproariously.). She asked me some follow up questions, like what if the message is urgent (put hot sauce on the notification taco, duh) and what if the locker taco spoils (which is impossible. I will always hasten to tacos). She decided that she wants to illustrate my idea, which I think will be very handy when I present this to Shark Tank, but at that moment she couldn’t find her iPad on her own desk. She looked for it while we were on the phone and I heard more papers fall to the floor than I even knew could be stacked together, which is honestly not surprising for Janna.

Until I started writing she was pretty much the resident slob of the family, an artist sharing a bedroom with outwardly pragmatic yet closeted choleric. That is to say that my side of the room was always annoyingly neat, and her side, a wreck. Most of the time her bed was unrecognizable to the untrained eye.

My entire family gave her shit about it. My aunt even made up a song about a stuffed dog (or some other random animal) that would rather sleep on my bed than Janna’s because mine was neater.

I’d rather sleep on Aunty Candice’s beeed, beCAUSE it is made uuuuuuuup.

“I hated that freaking song.”

“I bet you hated me too.”

“Yup.”

Janna does not pull her punches.

“But, I just kinda accepted that this was who I was, a person with too much on her mind to fold clothes.”

How she managed to come up with such casual wisdom while sequestered into a corner by her own mess is beyond me.

But then again, I’m one to talk. The only island of clean in my entire apartment is one of the couch cushions on my loveseat.

Before this part of my life I had always balked at disorder and sudden change. I wanted to know what to expect and also be in control of that, which manifested in my obsessive planning, strict scheduling, and annoyingly tidy room. If I was unhappy, I planned, if I was happy, I planned, if I was feeling a little down, I’d make fun of Janna for not planning. The system was perfect, running like clockwork, and then one day I walked out of grad school and never looked back. Since then I’ve never felt better or more disorganized, and never more like myself. Right now I’m sitting on top of some old tinfoil that I believe held a sandwich at some point, I’m surrounded by the contents of my backpack and my closet, and my dog is occupying the space between my chest and my keyboard so that I can barely type.

It feels like home.

For the first time ever, I feel like I am working with my life, instead of at it. Also I know where my dog is at this moment. That’s improvement.

I expressed all this to Janna when she returned to the phone, where she said something corny like, “It’s like by making a mess, you found yourself.”

I immediately broke into uproarious laughter, my way of reacting to sheer brilliance.