Office

I can't stand to go in there.

One of the few criteria that I had for selecting a house was that I wanted an office on the first floor. I thought that I was going to be working at home for the indefinite future, and I wanted the office downstairs so that I had easy access to the kitchen and to outside. We were lucky enough to find a model that had a "sunroom" on the first floor that we turned into an office for me. It is lined with bookshelves and has a lovely comfortable desk and chair.

I haven't worked in there since October, and I haven't spent more than 10 minutes in there at a time at all. But, it has become an easy dumping ground for books, papers, bills, and anything that needs organizations. It is a disaster area, and it makes my blood pressure shoot up just looking in there. I just went in to use the printer and I was uneasy sitting at the desk.

It desperately needs to be cleaned out, but I can't stand it. It's embarrassing to look at, but it makes me so sad to be in there. I could probably throw out half of the stuff that is in there. It's such a shame, because it is a beautiful room, but I'm not ready for that yet.

I've spent a fair amount of time trying to understand why it upsets me so much to go in there. I think that perhaps it's the only physical manifestation that I have of how much my life has changed. When you leave a job in an office, you walk away and never go back. I can't do that in this case... in fact, I have to look at it every day.

I did think that we should convert the room into something else. But, that would mean spending some kind of money on furniture and we certainly can't do that right now. What else would we do with it? Maybe the best idea would be to get a curtain for the door (it has glass panels) so that I can't see in there easily.

Or, does that mean that I'm just hiding from the problem?