Anyone who knows me also knows that I have a serious case of OCD. Until recently, that has a applied to every aspect of my life. Lately however, I’ve noticed that my OCD now only applies to the places and things that I am solely responsible for, primarily my apartment and car.
My desk at home is always nice and clean unless I’m working on some project. My car is the same way. It’s only messy if I’ve torn it apart for some new modification.
Another place that I am responsible for and spend a significant amount of time, is my desk at work, however it’s… closer to the pictures you see of tornado damage than the organized areas I usually maintain.
When I first started this job, I always kept my desk clean. I organized everything including the files on my computer’s desktop almost daily. Now, both my desk and computer’s desktop stay pretty messy. I think I know why.
One of the reasons for this is that now when I’m at work, I come in and then I’m out in the field working on something. There’s little downtime and when I do have it, it’s usually spent doing things on the computer and gathering my thoughts.
Another reason, and probably the most important one, is just the way my selective OCD works. See my apartment and car are always kept clean because I never know who will drop by or who will be a passenger. I like to present an image of always having myself put together and my things in order. I basically try to prevent being caught “slipping”. In my mind, keeping myself and my possessions in tip-top condition shows that I have things in order.
The difference between those things and my desk at work is that I don’t need a clean desk to show that I have things in order. At work, I do that by simply doing my job to the best of my ability. I provide great service, handle IT issues in a timely manner, explore ways to be more efficient, and just do what’s asked of me. The only time I really clean or organize things now is when my workspace becomes too cluttered to work.
I see this as a good thing. Many times my OCD freezes up my mind and I have to organize before I can be useful. Being organized is a good thing, until it gets in the way of more important things. My OCD has caused problems for me in the past and has sometimes caused me to take forever to do things that shouldn’t. I’ll always try to keep things in order for the most part, but being able to perform when they aren’t is a sign of personal growth.
Yes, my desk is still a mess at this moment, but I’ll be cleaning it next week since I should have some extra time to do so. Don’t they say the people with the messy desks are the one’s doing all the work. I agree with that.
Before I clean however, here are the things located in the tornado aftermath that I call my desk. Don’t judge too bad.
On my desk from left to right, I have:
- RFID Scanner
- Barebones PC
- Some tools
- Some snacks (most important things here)
- 2TB networked drive
- Some battery packs for our electronic locks
- Cisco Catalyst 8 port switch linked to some of our networks (under the monitor)
- Analog security camera hooked up through a digital encoder (testing)
- Pens and more tools
- My laptop, docking station, and dual monitor setup
- Another analog camera disassembled for repairs
- Spare change
- Software disk
- Sticky note reminders
- More battery packs
- Dead laptop battery
- Bad reader from one of our locks
- Paperwork and notepads
- More tools
- In back is a switcher for my keyboard/mouse/monitors to connect to systems we bring in for repairs
- Extra monitor for use when needed
- Keyboard and touchpad
- Under that is a compact Lenovo pc with a core i5
- Analog camera slated for disposal
- 2 old spare laptops
- And even more tools
Most of this stuff is quite useful and frequently needed. Like I said, I’ll clean soon, but I can report that the Snackwell cookies, Fanta, and Airhead eXtremes have been disposed of.
