It's not just my actual desktop that's invariably a mess (I'm ashamed to take a picture and share it). My computer's desktop is often a disaster, as well.
I just spent an hour cleaning it up (the computer one). I wish I'd taken a screenshot to show you the myriads of icons competing for space. My grandfather Osborn would have been horrified.
Dr. G. Edwin Osborn was one of the most organized people I've ever seen. When I was a boy, I once looked in his main desk drawer in his study and found everything lined up by category: pens, pencils, erasers, and--this is hard to believe--even his paperclips were arranged by size and by which side the little loop was on--the pin side was always on the right, I think.
My mom retained some of that fastidiousness--a lot of it, actually--but it was one of the first traits that began to erode as she got older. My brothers and I were continually helping her with her Quicken files, which grew ever less accurate as she aged. It's almost as if she were willingly shedding this most troublesome of traits.
To various degrees my brothers and I share that Osbornian organization. My younger brother, Dave, is probably the neatest of us; I'm in the middle; older brother, Richard, is least compulsive of us all about having each thing in its place. Richard the Rebel!
Our son displays little evidence of the gene, though his older son, our grandson Logan (11), shows flashes of it.
Anyway, on my computer desktop were folders full of images I meant to place ... somewhere. Links to sites whose relevance I can no longer recall. Newspaper cartoons that relate to various literary subjects (waiting to find a more sensible home). Word files I'm currently working on--if by "currently" I mean "in the last five years." Shortcuts to programs I no longer use--or even have. And on and on.
As I said, I just spent an hour merging, deleting, copying, transferring, etc. And now--I am proud to say--I have only forty icons on my desktop.
And that, my friends, is progress!
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