I have finally faced the fact that no matter how many shelving units, file cabinets, boxes, calendars, agendas and other assorted organizational items I buy, I will always be an “organized chaos” type of person. Every year my New Year’s Resolution is the same—“This year I will get organized!”, and every year, by January 10th, all indications and thoughts of organization are long since buried under piles upon piles of other work.
I remember when, in the early 1990’s, I got my first PC. I just knew I would never have to sit at my desk behind stacks upon stacks of paperwork again. This new wonder machine, my computer, was going to take care of all that for me. I could throw out all my file folders and file cabinets because everything was going to be in this greatest of all inventions, the computer! Well, we all know how that turned out!
I know everyone of you reading this thought the exact same thing when you got your computer. We all fell for the ads that told us we would get out of the “paper jungle”. The ads told us we would do everything on the computer. That someday we would even phone each other and watch movies on the computer.
So much of what they said has come to pass. We can talk to each other over the computer, we sit at our computer and watch movies, TV shows and sports. We get our news almost at the same instant it happens. The computer has simplified so much of our lives, but there is one area that even the computer can’t get a handle on. Actually, it’s the computer that caused the problem. What am I talking about? Papers, papers and more papers!!
As I sit here with my state of the art computer, I look around my office and see three huge bookcases and six file drawers all stuffed to the max with files and paperwork. This is by far more paperwork than I ever used to create prior to having my computer! How did this happen? I think I have figured it out.
It was the greed of the printer and ink companies. They started selling printers to go with your computer. Or I should say, they gave them away. If you bought a computer, you got this great little gift “bundle” that always included a printer. Now you had a way to print out every single thing you did on your computer, “just in case”. Just in case the computer crashed. Just in case you needed an extra copy. Just in case you wanted to read it without having to turn on your computer. There were all sorts of excuses you started making up just to hear the clickity-click of the printer cranking out those reams of paper.
All was good in the world. You had the best of both worlds. You had your computer that could do just about everything, and you had your printer that could make copies of it all! You started coping more and more and didn’t even realize it, but lurking somewhere out there was someone who did realize it—–the printer and ink companies. They saw your insatiable desire for more and more copies of anything and everything. They saw you going through those ink cartridges faster and faster. They said, hey, it’s not the printers we make a fortune on, it’s the ink!
The ink prices started creeping up more and more until along came some smart business people who had enough of it. They invented the ink refill kits. WOW! I was so excited! No more worrying about “should I print this or not?” No more need to try to save ink. If you ran out all you had to do was pull out your refill kit, refill the cartridge and keep on copying even more papers! Take that, you evil printer and ink companies, I have beaten you at your own game!
For a while all seemed perfect in this world of computers, ink and papers. You read, copied and re-inked. What more could you ask out of life? You smirked as you realized you had come out on top of this little skirmish with the big boys. Little did you know that while you thought they had run off with their tails between their legs, they were hard at work devising a new plan.
They invented a “smart chip” ink cartridge for the new printers. This little chip knows when it runs out of ink and will not let you refill it because the chip can’t be re-set. Not to worry—all is not lost! Once again, our quick thinking ink using nation came up with chip decoders and chip re-setters. So take that, again you big business bullies! We’re on it!
So goes the war between the big printer and ink companies and the rest of us. As hard as I try, I will never be organized because I can’t crawl out from under this pile of papers. But, I know I’m not alone in this. There are many others like me. You know who you are. We have this love-hate relationship with our papers and our stuff. Sometimes it’s a bane, sometimes it’s a security blanket, but always it’s ours…and maybe that’s why it’s so special to us.
From My Head to Yours 