The last couple of days, the word unmotivated understated my mood. A whole range of things played a role in that, but one significant one must be the desk in my room. The heating doesn't reach all the way into my 'office corner', the walls have moldy stains and the internet connection is at its lowest. And any attempt to work in bed is bound to fail. 

The Statsbiblioteket Aarhus would be a great place to work in the weekends - but it's closed. The Danes are very strict with their opening hours. But I recently got the key card to one of the University buildings. So I went to the wonderful and pretty new Information and Media Science building. To my surprise, I wasn't all alone. Two other groups worked on presentations, one was prepared and brought a six pack of beer. The building is great: it's spacey and has comfortable furniture AND there's a pool table and hammocks in the basement. The only thing missing, as far as I noticed so far, is a coffee machine. In either case, it was quiet, I couldn't distract myself with too many other things, and I actually got much of the stuff done that I kept pushing away for over a week now. 

And here's the thing: It's Sunday. Over the last half year, I became aware that my weekly rhythm individualized itself from the working world. The strict opening hour policies of Danish shops and public buildings confuses me. In Maastricht I even enjoyed the time I spent in the library with my housemates after Sunday dinner. And here, my rhythm is all messed up. All but this: Whatever my new Sunday is, it's not Sundays.

Today, I found a paperclip, and one that was truly rewarding. The fantastic thing about this paperclip is, and this distinguishes it from all those useless other paperclips laying around town, that it was in my room. Yes. It was here all along, and in my imagination, it was one of the paperclips that I used in my first year of University to bundle the exams and essay before handing them in. In the meantime, I stopped using paperclips and just stapled the stacks (don’t ask me why we used paperclips at first), I went abroad and had a sub-renter in my room, I came back, and now I am procrastinating heavily from writing that Bachelor’s thesis (as you might be able to tell, procrastination unfortunately is a big part of my life)

So I cleaned my desk, because I was sure that once it’s clean and tidy, I would be able to work so much more efficient. I threw away some stuff and sorted some papers and realized I also had to sell this desk at some point. This seemed the perfect time to empty and photograph it.

And when I was done doing that, I decided to throw away some pens that aren’t working any more, as to eventually end up with one can filled with pens instead of two. At the bottom of that one can, with all the ink spots and sharpening-dust, there was this one paperclip.

As if it had been a sign, a riddle in my head was solved, I sorted out all my issues with moving out, moving in somewhere else, moving out there again and then sort of not living anywhere but having to be somewhere, and now it all makes sense, and there is a plan and it’s on a piece of paper and that’s (almost) the only piece of paper on my desk right now, too.

Now that I’ve posted this and put that desk online to sell it and cleaned everything and ate (because cleaning made me hungry), I can finally continue working.