The chaos caught up with me today. I spent the whole morning looking for a file folder that I'd misplaced. I spent half the afternoon looking for an invoice that doesn't exist. I took a look around at the disarray in every part of my house and wondered how I could possibly find anything, ever.

We received a big check in yesterday's mail for work we've been doing on a job up north. I always make two copies of any check I deposit, one for the job file and one for the bank file. If that seems like a waste of paper to you, you've never been quizzed, questioned and queried by a boss who's obsessed with a paper trail. I also record every deposit in three different places on the computer.

That makes it sounds as if I'm organized, right? Wrong.

I looked in the usual places for the folder, including the file box where it should have been, and the pile of loose folders on top of that box. Then I leafed through every stack of papers on my desk, and all around the room, including every place where there was no chance it could have been. Those places I checked a few extra times, because by now I was sure I'd done something really dumb with it.

And I was right! It was in the last place I looked. (What are the odds of that?) About two weeks ago I'd taken a pile of loose papers off the corner of my desk, where they were teetering precariously, and put them in a box for later sorting and possible shredding. These were drafts of letters, mostly, things I'd typed and retyped over and over until someone (usually the Boss) was satisfied. (Now we're really talking about wasted paper. I type and fax, he corrects and faxes back, and then I retype and fax again. Ad nauseam.)

I don't know what made me look in that box for the missing folder. Maybe deep down I knew I'd somehow let it get into that pile, then kept putting more and more papers on top of it until I couldn't tell it was there any more. More likely, I knew it was the last possible place to look. Anyway, that's where it was. I was so relieved I didn't have the energy to feel ashamed as well.

Late this afternoon I was able to send the Boss the cost report he asked for yesterday. Of course he had many questions (not to mention quizzes and queries), including the reason that one particular invoice hadn't been recorded. I managed to waste a good portion of my valuable time looking for this invoice before it came to me that it didn't exist. (That's why it wasn't recorded.) If I were a little better organized I would have realized it a lot sooner. Instead, I had to blame someone, so I wrote the Boss a little note, thanking him for the buggy ride.