milestone

It won't feel like a big deal to the rest of you, but it is a big deal.

Yesterday, I came to the end of the stack of magazines that have been piling up in my office for almost a year.

That's right, I managed to at least skim (but mostly read, as in full-on READ) every single magazine that I have put into the pile on my desk for the past 11 months. Youth ministry magazines, the Christian Century, Presbyterians Today, magazines from various charity and mission organizations, the Alban Institute magazine, etc. Every. Last. One.

When I began this particular part of the clean-my-office project, the stack was probably about 18 inches tall, maybe taller.

And last night, I finished.

Some of the magazines went into the stack of collage supplies. Some went into the recycling bin. Some had pages torn out and distributed to various ministry teams, colleagues, files, etc. But all have been read and dealt with in some way.

This is a huge milestone. It meant that when the new Christian Century arrived in my box (also yesterday), I could read it right away without feeling like I needed to just add it to the stack. It meant that I could see a roughly 9x12 area on the top of my desk for the first time in nearly a year. It meant that the tallest of the piles that needed to be dealt with in the office cleaning project was gone--poof.

And now it means that I can move on to the much quicker aspects of cleaning and organizing, because that huge project is finished, and I feel like I can safely move ahead. I know the things I should have known when these issues were published. I've filed the stories or poems or images that might be useful. Now it's time to file or recycle or otherwise deal with everything else on my desk.

Trust me, it's a milestone. A big one.