#23 / W-T-W

 

 

Here is a New Year's Resolution kind of item, which was written before the 2022 New Year had actually arrived, but as the "Old Year," 2021, was definitely coming to a close. This blog posting is being published, of course, when one-twelfth of the New Year is almost gone. I tend to write these daily blog postings in advance of the date on which they actually appear, and I am about a month ahead at this point!

The photo above is a table in my home office. I love that table, which was the first desk I ever had, as an attorney. My ownership of this table dates from when I first showed up in Santa Cruz in 1971. I can't remember where I got it, exactly, but at some secondhand store in Santa Cruz, I am pretty sure. I moved that desk into my father's law office building at 124 Locust Street, at the corner of Cedar and Locust, where a huge parking garage now graces the landscape. 

 

The desk below, which was my father's desk, is also beloved by me, and it is also in my home office, as I write. Heaven knows where these wonderful pieces of furniture will end up when I am no longer around. They definitely will not fit into my son's tiny home, also pictured below in a contemporary, and quite lovely, Christmastime scene.

 

 

What prompts this blog posting is not the two pieces of furniture pictured, but the piles of material stacked on both of them. As I say, this is a kind of "New Year's Resolution" item, although you'll read it (if you do read it) well into the New Year. The morning on which I wrote this blog posting, as I was taking a shower (not pictured), I realized that I must, by the end of 2022, "clear the decks" for what I think I actually ought to be doing: W-T-W.

I used to have an expression, W-L-H, which I thought best described my life assignment: "Work Like Hell." I am revising downward to "Walk, Teach, Write," or maybe "Write, Teach, Walk." Those are the three activities I feel most drawn to, recently, and the mess you can see in my "command center" office is a source of much discouragement.

Each of the items piled on my two desks represents a commitment unmet. And the "unmet" nature of the commitments I have made, and then not fulfilled, contributes to a definite depression in my spirits. I am feeling that depression in my spirits as I write this, at the end of the year. I am resolving to dispose of this mess - sooner rather than later, and definitely by 2023! I'll try to remember to provide an update, as the year proceeds, but as I remember saying in blog postings not yet published (as of December 24, 2021): 

 

No Guarantees!

 

Image Credits:

Gary A. Patton, personal photos

 

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