A messy desk is a sign of genius, right?

Have you ever put something right there and then had it move on you?

That happened to me this morning--or sometime in the last month. I spent the morning sifting through the wreckage that is my office looking for something. And while I've found a coin purse that I've been seeking, a purple pen that I thought my nephew lost and a now-expired coupon that I needed two weeks ago, I still didn't find the receipt for my allergy medicine so I can get it refilled.

It moved on me.

I don't know where it went, but I suspect Florida.

Of course, I've always heard that a messy desk is a sign of genius. If so, I'm a rocket scientist by the look of my office.

Typically, I'm a fairly neat housekeeper. I dust and vacuum regularly, don't like clean or dirty clothes piled in the bedroom, and I never use my treadmill as a coat rack. But this cleanliness (obsession, some have called it) doesn't extend to my office. Never has. Probably never will, if I'm honest.

My filing system is a series of piles--this one for receipts, that one for unread magazines, and this really sloppy one for notes and ideas for books. Books spill off the shelves and pile up on the floor. Pens litter the available surfaces like ants at a picnic and new/half-used notebooks are everywhere else.

In fact, the recipe for cold fusion could be in this room and corporate spies would never be able to find it. I suppose that is the upside of this mess. I'd know immediately if anyone rifled through my stuff because not even James Bond could go through my desk and put everything back where it goes.

That's a good thing, isn't it?