Obstacles to Writing

There is no worse obstacle to writing for me than distraction.  And no worse distraction than a dirty desk.  My desk has become a magnet for clutter.  When I sat down this morning to try to write this is what I found:

• several pictures my kids drew over the years that I intended to frame
• my e-Reader, totally dead and without its charger
• a Print Shop CD that I never installed and probably never will
• a box of GRE vocabulary cards that were mocking me
• a stack of used and new Franklin planner pages - do I really need that when I have Outlook?
• a Franklin planner filled with unused pages from September
• a really cool Christmas card from last year with a gingerbread man that morphs into a snowman cookie if you move it
• The Iliad
• a bookmark that I quickly inserted into The Iliad
• headphones for the Rosetta Stone French course that I've been meaning to install
• several pens
• a stack of journals from the last two years that I have intended to look through to pull out story ideas but haven't
• a piece of paper with my ex-husband's email address on it
• "Tuning Zone-Based Policy Firewall Denial-Of-Service Protection" printout - obviously not mine
• the warranty info for my tv
• a tv, which I regret I chose to put on my desk
• scissors, two screwdrivers, and a half-dozen power cords (still not the one for my dead e-Reader)
• two large pen holders filled but with no pens
• a stapler
• the reading glasses I have been searching for
• a pad of graph paper
• three drawing books for children and a pad of drawing paper
• two coasters
• a dirty coffee cup
• a lot of loose poems
• printouts from the printer, mostly garbage
• random receipts
• a remote control
• a notebook just for poetry drafts
• a stack of papers I need to look through
• the power cord for my digital camera
• an empty plastic report cover
• my current writing journal
• laptop and laptop accessories
• lamp
• two black mesh dividers for bills with no bills

I removed everything from my desk, polished it, and put back the things that actually belong there.  The rest I left on the floor, my bed, or my dresser (yes, spreading out the mess).  Now my desk is too clean.  I still can't seem to focus on what I wanted to write about and can't find the chapter I wanted to work on (my guess is it's in the stack on the floor).