Disorganised intrigue

If a tidy desk is the sign of a tidy mind, then my mind is way beyond untidy. My workspace looks like an experimental site for chaos theory. My printer is covered with post-it notes from my secretary in an interesting array of colors. I think the violent pink ones mean she's mentioned this before and I haven't yet responded. My PDA keeps flashing at me. It would like to sync with my email and diary, but since IT decided that Exchange was no longer the way to go, that is now nothing more than a vain hope. So much for functionality and making us all more efficient. I now spend more time transferring my meetings manually to my devices than I spend in the meetings themselves. Well, OK that's an exaggeration, but only just. I'm thinking of transferring everything to google. Actually, maybe I'll just buy a paper diary.

Which would be good. Afterall, I can write. It's what I do. Only, I was never very good at keeping a diary; it's the routine thing. As a kid I'd get a diary for Christmas - who didn't? - and I'd write down everything that happened for the first few days. All the presents Santa brought; the things I liked and didn't. Then it pretty much dried up. You know, months of blank pages then "nothing happened today". Which kinda of makes you wonder about the other days when not even 'nothing' was worth recording...

So, back to my desk - see it's those little diversions that make life more interesting - it's one of those curved affairs. Lots of space to work - or in my case to fill. There are a half dozen briefing papers I've yet to read; 3 CDs (Aaron Copland, Charles Ives and Faure) one of which I'm currently listening to - Ives, Central Park in the Dark; three bottles of sparkling mineral water in various stages of emptiness; two coffee cups; one glass tumbler and 3 plastic versions thereof; 14 papers I'm working on; the Harvard Business Review; The Times Higher Ed; Thomas Paine's Rights of Man; 3 notebooks; my ipod (with a low battery, I forgot to recharge it last night); my ID card; and somewhere under all this paperwork must be my keys. Did I mention the safety pin? There's also a safety pin. From last week's graduations. It should be in my suit pocket so that when I need it again to pin the hood to my robe I know where it is. My suit, having survived 3 graduation ceremonies, is at the dry-cleaners. I just hope that when the time comes they can be reunited.

The finance paper that I need for my meeting this afternoon is not on my desk. My finance manager called in sick for the third morning in a row, and so the paper she should have prepared is still a pipe dream. Not that this is a problem. I work much better without the facts, it saves me tripping over myself. Actually, I'm very good talking off the cuff or, if you prefer, flying by the seat of my pants. Just give me a couple of key words and the floor is mine.

That's probably why when I write I'm very good at dialogue. I'm crap at the bits in between mind. My editor thinks this is not insurmountable. In fact she challenged me to write this blogg because it would be words without dialogue. I'm not quite sure how she figures my blogging monologues to be any closer to the bits that go in between the dialogue but I'm sure she has a plan.

My electronic diary has just reminded me that I'm participating in a webcast today "Authentic Leadership". It's title intrigued me, more from a writer's perspective. I mean authentic leadership what does that mean? I looked authentic up in the dictionary and the definition I liked was:

"entitled to acceptance or belief because of agreement with known facts or experience"

How close is that to any one's definition of leadership? This took me into "I think, therefore I am" kind of territory, so you can see why I'm intrigued. Or maybe not. This is my disorganised brain, afterall, not yours.

I'm off to read 'Aligning American Higher Education', I'm sure it will be a scintillating experience...