Fear of Perfection

I don't normally fear perfection, because I'm unlikely ever to achieve it. This partially the result of my own efforts. I scarf down cheeseburgers and keep my music ragged with half a thought that Adonis and Jesus died because they were too good at what they were and did. There is, however, one part of my life that threatens to become so good I wouldn't belong in it: my office.

My office is the result of a multi-year process of furniture acquisition, disposal, rearrangement, and modification. The changes in my office tend toward the smaller and simpler thing. I traded in a five-ton, particle-board-and-laminate desk– a bona fide Ohisian antique with drawers and roll-out surfaces that could have put another respectable hole in the Titanic– for a narrow stand of shelves. I replaced a wheeled office chair that had levers and hydraulic adjustments with a pine dining chair.

These spurts of acquisition are relatively rare. More frequently, I decide that the acoustics or ergonomics of my office are all wrong, so I shove the desk from one end to the middle, or from the middle to the corner, I rearrange all the bookshelves, I raise or lower my computer screen, I change the microphone stands around, and I rewire my mixer and speakers. All this within about 70 square feet.

I was perfectly happy with this ongoing draft of an office. I liked shaking it up every two or three weeks. Every time I moved things around, it was like moving to a new place. I decided what I needed and didn't need, cleared out some piles of papers, and really thought about which things I wanted to have quick-to-hand and what I wouldn't mind walking ten feet to look for.

I almost have it. Now that I found place for my computer mouse, I can almost see not having to move or change anything else. This worries me because, as I said, I like moving things around. What if my self-made environment is a reflection of my mind? I'm fine with most of what that implies: pieces from my grandparents, a shelf full of books I hardly remember, a general sense of precarious half-assedness. But if I never have to move or clear this space out, it will never change. Will my mind never change? Will it calcify under a mudslide of just-right arrangement?

Two consolations: I will certainly have to move, for real, sometime in the near future. Grad school runs out, real life calls. I plan to populate a house away from the city, preferably by some woods. That will be a process. Second, I will never be satisfied. (This is a consolation.) I am judging from the evidence of my entire life so far: there is always another desk I want to make, a better position for the microphones, and a new way to write. Thank goodness: nothing to be afraid of.