Shuffling

I'm packing for my move and find myself shuffling my stuff about. Shuffling, shifting, moving from here to there, sorting, filing, recategorizing, organizing. There's so much I can do with my stuff. I sold the couch, it's gone, so there's more room in the livingroom to lay everything out, although time is short, especially now that we've scheduled more remodeling on the other house, my new house, my new home...he wants me to call it 'our house.' I've never had trouble claiming other people's belongings as 'ours' or sometimes even 'mine,' so I don't know why this is hard for me. Maybe it'll feel more like mine when I wake up there on a regular basis and go home to there after work. Maybe it'll feel more like mine when I stop worrying that he's going to be mad if I drop something on the floor or leave a mess in the kitchen.

That's one kind of stuff, but not the kind on my mind today. Today I'm noticing, while I sit at my office hours (yes, I have office hours, again, hence the blogging, again), how much electronic shuffling I'm doing. Not the electric slide, mind you, but the electronic shuffle. I started a second Google account in order to have a profile up for my other blog that shows my name, after all, the other blog is about my business and to stimulate business so it doesn't make sense to stay anonymous there. So I shuffled info onto the new profile and off the old, I clicked and okay'd and entered the codes so that I have a new account, but don't ever have to go there, except for the purpose of writing for that other blog.

I also shuffled photos the other day - just creating folders and subfolders so that I can find photos more easily. All the while keeping in mind my idea about scanning in all the paper photos I have, so planning for even more photos going into all these folders.

I started creating groups in my Gmail account and assigning people's emails to the groups, so that I can email group emails, which I find so annoying and usually avoid, to specific groups. What to do with Jefe or Ree or A or E? They defy categorization - either that or they fall into multiple categories. The point is to simplify group emailing, or so I tell myself, and they deserve more than that or at least my ability to remember to send them something individually if I leave them off a group. And what about those people I don't remember, not just to send emails to, but truly have no idea who they are? What should I do with those people in the Contacts list that I cannot place? Deletion seems drastic, after all, Google says not to delete anything anymore, just archive it all and search. But wow, talk about clutter.

So I shuffle information and groups and photos and people, but it's a lot of work with little to show for it. The next couple nights I need to start physically shuffling, putting my precious belongings in boxes and start moving them to A's house, our house. And when they get there, shuffle his things to make room, mix some of his and some of mine and call it ours, call it home. For now, I'm going to shuffle my attention back to the tasks at hand and accomplish some organizing and shuffling here at the office, instead of shuffling my hours, shuffling my papers whenever anyone walks in the room.