Chaos and Order

by Ian M. Rogers

I have trouble working amid chaos. If my office is full of scattered papers, piles of books, or hand tools I’ve cast aside after a day of repair work, I absolutely have to put them away before I can focus. If I don’t, I find my mind constantly drifting to the objects in my workspace that aren’t put away, because something isn’t right and has to be fixed.

Unfortunately, a lot of things aren’t right in my life right now and have to be fixed: I have looming freelance deadlines, pictures I want to hang, winter clothes to put away, and a storage room full of boxes I haven’t unpacked after moving last year. In particular, it bothers me that half of my book collection is still in these boxes, so that if I have to look up a line in, say, Nabokov’s Pale Fire, I won’t be able to find my copy and would have to either buy a new one (which would waste money) or fill out an interlibrary loan form (which would take time).

On any given day, I push aside the many undone tasks in my life to be done “later” because I constantly have more pressing things to do. Though this provokes temporary relief, the undone tasks still gnaw at me, eating away at my focus over weeks and months. My leisure time suffers as well, and I can’t relax on my days off because I’m always thinking about the tasks that need doing.

Part of my problem is that I live in an older house in need of endless maintenance: mostly small things like missing light fixtures, a basement in need of decluttering, not one but two porches that need paint, and tall flowering weeds overrunning the side yard. Chief among these tasks, however, are the bookshelves I’d like to install in the empty recessed wall of my office so I can finally sort my book collection.

As a whole, all of this makes me feel like my everyday life is stagnant, that I can’t accomplish my goals, and that things will stay this way forever.

I feel the same way about my writing goals, with an endless stream of unfinished and unstarted projects competing for my time and attention. I end most workdays feeling disappointed with my lack of progress and yearn to halt the relentless distractions that prevent me from writing all the stories and novels I’d like to.

Chaos in our lives interferes with our ability to be creative by causing material difficulties and disrupting our internal sense of order. That’s why, when I sit down to accomplish a task, no matter what it is, it feels like one small step toward a more orderly life.

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A few weeks ago I went outside to weed the gardens outside the house, one of which was overflowing with woodchips and grass while the other was overgrown with dandelions the height of a small child. I threw on a set of junk clothes, grabbed my gardening tools, found an old recycling bin to toss the weeds into, and got to work.

It was a bright, beautiful day that never came close to getting too hot—the type of day easily taken for granted in the late spring in New Hampshire before the heat rolls in. Down on my hands and knees, I found a sense of relief in pulling out the weeds one by one, hoeing out the roots, tossing away the sand, and picking out bits of plastic from the soil. From the chaos of the weedy gardens emerged open flower beds where lush hosta plants grew surrounded by neat rocks of various sizes. I know little about gardening, but I do know the edges matter—if the edges are clearly defined, then even the simplest cluster of plants will feel like a garden.

I felt a similar accomplishment last week when I started building a set of bookshelves for my office—bookshelves that will help me finally sort my books and find my copy of Pale Fire. My carpentry skills are minimal, and I have few tools, but it’s fun to figure out each step as I go, rigging up a workbench out of an old table and digging out threadbare t-shirts I can use to stain the wood. Finding the best layout for the shelves presents a geometric puzzle, and after many trials I determine the right setup and stand back to admire the arrangement that’s given form to a sprawling blank space.

Moments like this give me hope that I can tame the chaos.

This post is the first thing I’ve written for some time. The accomplishment I gain from finishing this and other tasks gives me hope for a near future where I can focus on things that are more important than overgrown dandelions and finally find my copy of Pale Fire. I can feel the chaos of the past begin to dissipate and a newer, stronger way of being emerge.

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Ian M. Rogers is the author of MFA Thesis Novel from Vine Leaves Press, a satirical novel about trying to become a writer in academia. He has worked as a copy editor, a greenhouse assistant, a school secretary, a grocery clerk, an online test-grader, a housepainter, a gardener, and a teacher of English in Japan, most recently at Kanagawa University in Yokohama. He lives in New Hampshire, where he works as an independent editor. You can find more at https://ianmrogersauthor.com or here and here.