During the first week of spring, the temperature dipped into the twenties, the daffodils lay prostrate on the walk, and I devoted an entire day to cleaning out my files.
I usually purge them in January to get a fresh start on the year, but I had failed to do so, not only this past January, but also in January of 2011.
So it was time—past time. Loose paper never sorts itself out. The trivial and the important were jammed together, both in the cabinet and in my head. My neglect to use organization as a strategic planning tool (see Wildly Organized) was symbolic of an ambivalence about where I am in my professional life.
Recently I was on my way home from a visit to a friend in Philadelphia, and after I boarded the train at 30th Street Station and settled into my seat, I noticed a man in his mid-fifties across the aisle from me. 
I’m sitting in the cozy living room of a house perched on the side of a steep hill overlooking Skaneateles Lake. (Pronounced “skinny-atlas,” it’s the second easternmost of New York’s Finger Lakes). 
