Cleaning the Temple

Since the holiday season, my home office has slowly become a disaster. First I had a horrid sinus infection and then around two weeks later I learned I was pregant. A few weeks after the first-trimester nausea entered, I still needed to prepare for my Winter classes at DePaul. While I was dealing with school and my pregnancy, my poor home office was neglected.

I am in the midst of "cleaning the temple." It is a Buddhist belief I learned about from the Mary Morris interview and profile in A Question of Balance: Artists and Writers on Motherhood. Morris states, "A lot of what I'm doing as a writer is taking a chaos of emotions tht I've lived with all my life and trying to make sense of it. I have to create outer order in order to deal with inner disorder."

Right now my home office (the sunroom in my husband's and my condo) is filled with my drafts, books, and student work that I still have from the Fall quarter. I do feel a little claustrophobic writing this.

My last week teaching at DePaul is next week. I still have some student assignment to issue comments on, but bird by bird, I will again make this place a good creative work environment.