My home serves as far more than a personal refuge. It’s where I compulsively organize and integrate thousands of obsessively acquired castoffs and cultural remnants into a never-quite-integrated whole. Everything in my home is part of an unintelligible filing system. I endlessly shuffle items from shelf to shelf in a futile effort to refine my big picture. I convince myself that there’s an optimal arrangement to showcase individual items and explain how they’re part of the greater whole – a perfect grouping that will translate to you the source of my enthusiasm. I want you to be in on the joke. Needless to say, a target that vague is perpetually elusive, and housecleaning can make it worse. As I’m dusting, I either forget where the pieces came from, or find myself reconsidering what I’ve done before. Either way, I’m back to the starting point. Yes, I do have a problem…

People invariably are fascinated with my house. I’m contemplating an annual tour event that would give me a chance to show off my evolving masterpiece. Perhaps other people will see the same soothing pattern that I do in all the visual clutter.