Magazine Tsunami

My desk is 20′ long. That’s a big desk but I need it because the drawings I use take up a lot of space. There are other items that have found a home on my desk because I use them (sketch paper, pens and various beverages that were only partly consumed) and when done, I am indifferent to removing them. It doesn’t take long before the crap on my desk starts to generate it’s own life force. I try to ignore it for as long as I can but it’s like talking to someone with bad breath, you can go only so long until you just can’t take it any longer. Since it’s MY desk, I can’t just walk away.

The things that are the biggest contributors to the clutter are magazines. Sure, they look innocent enough, with their glossy pages and alluring photos, but when you turn your back on them, they will multiply. For some reason, architect’s get free magazines. You start off with good magazine’s like Architect, Progressive Architecture, The Architectural Review, and Dwell. After awhile, you start getting really specific fringe magazines like Alternative Power Construction, North American Pipelines, MetalMag and Log Cabin Builder. Why am I getting North American Pipelines and Log Cabin Builder? Who do these people think I am?

I get way more magazines than I have time to read – a lot more. They get piled up in “to look at later” stacks but they come in too fast. The stacks become structurally unsound as they get higher and higher so new stacks are formed. Soon my office starts looking like the residence of a shut-in with OCD and I think – I’m going to need Mr. T and the A-Team to get me out of this mess. Eventually, with a little bit of sadness, I force myself to put these glossy, full-bleed, thick page beautiful magazines into a recycling bin(s), with most never having been looked at.

If you want your own magazine tsunami, go to here and have fun – but don’t say I didn’t warn you.