I have a problem with organization. That's another way of saying that I'm disorganized. My logs are not logs. My checkbook is unbalanced. I tried Quicken, the personal finance software program that's supposed to be foolproof. Guess again. My receipts gather in a bin and exchange information on where they each came from and how long they've been hanging out.

I keep piles instead of files. They are loosely organized. One is for press materials, which includes releases, folders, brochures, and potential reference sources. One is Things-to-Read, a proud tower of magazines and newspaper clippings that refuses to fall over. One is bills and correspondence. At home I keep a joint pile with my wife. It's for junk mail.

My office is my castle. It's a little room off the busiest street in a small town, and only I know all the good hiding places. And yet, I am not master of the domain. There are insurrectionary forces. The index cards of my Rolodex derailed themselves, slinked out of the compartment, and banded into a pile of their own like a splinter group of anarchists. They de-alphabetized themselves, a clever strategy that anticipated my lack of will to re-order them.

A Cosmic Struggle

The struggle between order and disorder is at once trivial and deeply mysterious. It exists across the spectrum of human consciousness, from religious institutions to office supply stores--both of which, I should note, are proliferating worldwide and are multi-billion dollar enterprises.

The only people who do not fight constantly with disorder are dead people. As for the extremely orderly, it's almost impossible to live with them. There's a line between what's admirable and what's compulsive, and I maintain that when you have deposited all your "vital information" into a palm-sized computer--called, naturally, an organizer--and feel good about yourself, you've put one foot over it. Perfect order is dark, joyless. Ritualized chaos is spontaneous. Consider two stereotypes--Germans and Italians.

Or so I rationalize.

When I come into the office in the morning, I try not to look at the piles. This is surprisingly easy. After a while, you see, I stop seeing them. But they have become organic. They keep growing. Sub-piles exist that I swear I had no hand in creating. Time and again I discover some resource I never knew I had--and which might have been really useful six or twelve months earlier.

Every so often, I resolve to change. It feels good to clean up the office, to see the clear, gleaming surfaces of the two desks I keep (one for writing, the other for piles). But my desks have muscle memory and quickly snap back into mis-shape.

Here's the strange part. Within my chaos, there is a thread of order. I usually can find things. Yet every time I clean up my office, I can't find anything at all.

In Search of Solutions

I thought of hiring an assistant to tend to the piles, but I am certain strange hands will unleash some bureaucratic poltergeist. My wife once bought me different colored paperclips and suggested a color-based system. It was very logical but it didn't take into account my corporate culture--which is an official-sounding way to say I couldn't remember what each color stood for.

Ledger books I bought intending to turn over a new leaf invariably remain pristine on the shelf until they acquire an old look. For no good reason whatsoever, at the next wave of resolve I replace them with new ones.

Each new tax year arrives with a strange mix of dread and elation. Dread because nothing is in order; elation because it means I've gotten through the previous year audit-free. I escape the audit, I believe, because I overpay to avoid the prospect of sharing my blank books with some forbidding and incredulous soul from the Internal Revenue Service.

The Roots of Disorganization

Looking back, I believe my disorganization began as a survival mechanism. When I stepped out into the blinding sunlight of self-employment, I wasn't making much money. So, like any self-respecting person bent on an idea that won't conform to reality, I avoided the topic. Receipts, bills, invoices--all that stuff reminded me of my ailing career, and so I chose not to be reminded. By the time I was doing better, my habits were set.

Along the way, I developed a certain contempt for paperwork. A small activity for small minds. What am I, a paper-pusher? And this belied another fear, that if I started paying attention to my good luck, I would invite an Evil Eye. Not that I'm superstitious, but as my mother wisely observed, why take chances?

In one of my short-lived intervals of reform, I bought a self-help book about how to become better organized. I was quite determined and cleaned up my office but good. By the time I was done, the book was gone, and I haven't seen it since.

TODD PITOCK lovingly attends to his chaos in Bryn Mawr, PA.