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The first mistake was drifting into the pet store.
Pet stores are such calming diversions -- especially when one is supposed to be somewhere else. There's something about the leathery wrinkles of iguanas, the ear-bending squawking of parrots and the pointless scurrying of mice that prepares me for the unpleasantness of business meetings to which I'm headed.
But this time, two tiny oranda goldfish, a glittery white one with a red cap and flaming orange one graced with black fin tips, begged to follow me home.
"This could work," I thought. "I could buy a little fish bowl and set it on my desk."
That led to mistake number two: "But first, I need to clean off my desk."
Then came mistake three: I headed to the office supply store.
"This is the year I get organized. All I need are a couple of file folders and maybe a basket." Mistake number four.
I stepped into the big box office supplies shop -- and giggled like a kid set loose in toy emporium.
Bouquets of markers sprouted in colorful rows like a big box of Crayolas on steroids. Paperclips clustered in pockets sorted by sizes, shapes, hues and finishes. Shelves nearly buckled beneath glorious displays of baskets, boxes, briefcases, pouches, cartons and crates in stackable meshes, flashy fabrics and buildable designs.
I wasn't just going to organize my desk. I was going to neatnick the entire storage room I called my home office. It would be awesome! (Mistake number 5, I think, but I lost track. I hadn't bought the checklists and daily planners yet.)
When Martha Stewart pitched precise places for everything, I was busy cramming documents in shoeboxes and loading my desk with paperwork piles, much in the way mountains are built on layers of sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks.
Martha can always retrieve a thing because she knows which bin to open. I can always find a document because I know whether it's in the sand, shells or pebbles portion of the sedimentary layer of bills, credit card offers and notes from my wife.
But this, this beautiful, beautiful store with rows of staplers, scissors, push-pins and notepads from shirt pocket to board room presentation size fired my resolve for regimentation.
I couldn't help myself. Surrounded by binders and folders and planners and Post-Its, my mind swirled with dreams of color-coded, cross-indexed, and alphabetized, codified and canonized spick-and-spanness of systematic order.
I grabbed one of everything. Two, in case the first set broke. Then made it five of everything, in case Mom still made me share with my siblings.
Halfway through burying the mounds of paperwork-popping shoeboxes in my office beneath clutters of shopping bags, my sweet wife, when she could find her voice, demanded, "What are you doing?"
"Good news, Honey. We're getting a goldfish."
Mistake number six (or possibly number 17 or 23 or 48 -- I hadn't opened my new planner yet), I blamed my mess on the pets -- before I even brought them home. I've got to work on organizing my excuses.
— Add to Cole's paperwork at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com, or cram his inbox on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.