Paper pile

Today, borne aloft on some species of new-year's fugue state, I went through the Terrifying Box of Terminally Ignored Paper. Which is supposed to be my actual inbox, for actual paper, about which L to the LOL, if you feel me.

I found out some things.

99% of all Xtinpaper is lists on the back of manuscript pages of books I've edited. My lists say 'Berocca' and 'milk' on them a lot. I spend a lot of time designing invitations and food for my parties. I keep everyone's cards and letters. I have an entirely useless $3,518.67 in a university-based pension account which I earned nearly 20 years ago when I was working for the press. I can get access to it when I'm 65 in 2038 (holy crap) and use it to buy a LRB and a milky way, or something. I have cards from bars I went to in Australia in 2009 which are inexplicably in the folds of the energy bills I keep because for some bugfuck reason they're still the only way there is to prove your address in this world. Estate agents send you a lot of paper and it's always something you have to keep. I pick up too many free postcards. Supermarket receipts get everywhere, like my hair. Sometimes the pile of paper has a skincare sample in it.

I don't have a good pair of scissors in the office, because I tried to cut net curtain wire with them in 2010. I'm never going to use that notepad with the apple on the front which has rolled over into every Terrible Paper Pile in living memory. My mother is the only person who still sends me physical photographs. I get too many paper catalogues. I keep them for nonsensical lengths of time because they have pretty pictures inside.

There was a weird bit where the paper went straight from being about self-assessment tax returns to my 39th birthday and then I remembered that the Terrifying Box had overflowed and I'd dumped a paper billabong into Adjunct Terrifying Tesco Bag-for-Life which was in the bottom of the wardrobe. Terrifying Tesco Bag contained Auxiliary Heffers Bag, for the love of god.

I got to the bottom. I think I haven't committed any felonies or gone on any bailiff-watchlists. This is a picture of everything that's left. The Pile of Proper Sorting-Out. An Aladdin DVD is on top. Long story.