A Laugh On Me

A neurosis of mine is losing or misplacing my pens. I hate to do that. I can have a totally messy desk, side table, room, etc. and it does not bother me (at least not enough to do something about it). But let me not be able to find my pen and I get all anxious about it and have a strong urge to keep searching until I find it. I want to know the disposition of my pens. I'm getting better at learning to let go when I do lose one but it still causes some distress.

Today, I had another pen incident. A few minutes prior to our weekly team meeting, I was in one of my teammate's cube discussing an issue he was having. When it came time to go to the meeting, I walked back over to my cube to get the printed agenda. At that point I looked for my pen so I could take it too and did not see it. Then I remembered that I had it when I went over to my teammate's cube. So I walked back over to his cube and looked. It was not there. On the way back to my cube and once I arrived, I did the Inspector Colombo routine of patting all of my pockets, trying to identify where my pen had gone to. Not there. Then I started rifling through the papers stacked on my desk. Not there. Feeling pretty anxious now, where had that pen gone to?

By this time, I was a minute late for my meeting. So finally I decided I would have to let the pen go and I retrieved another one from my drawer. I went to the meeting and sat down. It had not started yet and I was still wondering where I could have misplaced the pen. As the meeting was beginning, I reached up to scratch my ear and my missing pen fell into my lap. I had stuck it behind my ear to keep it safe. Relieved that I had found it, I could not help but smile and have a silent laugh at myself.