continuing the train of thought from yesterday and the whole situation with the mugs, let’s talk about my purple stapler.

i know, i have a purple stapler. and, its kinda amazing. it’s purple and has a comfort grip and according to amazon, where I just searched to see if i could find an image to include in this post (found it!) it costs a whopping $15 (and that’s marked down from $28!). doesn’t that seem ridiculous for a stapler? clearly this stapler was purchased for me, by a former employer during a different economic time.

here’s the story of my purple stapler:

on the first day of my first job out of college, the girl who I was replacing (who happened to be my roommate and one of my closest friends) gifted me with a box of office supplies that she had specifically ordered for me. she had labeled everything: scissors, files, tape and of course, the purple stapler. a year later, when i got a promotion and moved from my tiny desk (really a closet with a pull out shelf that doubled as a workspace) to the 8^th floor where all the program managers and directors sat – i brought my purple stapler with me. after all, how could I be the director of teen programs and NOT have a purple stapler. it was just meant to be.

i shared a cube with my super organized supervisor, and a cube wall with the after-school program director and they were both into labels. lots and lots of labels. i became fascinated with all the things i could label – it just made everything look so pretty and official. eventually i ordered my own label maker, which my three teen interns at the time (JUSTIN, JEREMY and ISAIAH – yep, i remember all these years later) decided to cover with…labels. they were a special group. they also decided the most efficient way to get the refrigerator size box of holiday donations to the shelter was to wheel said box ½ a mile down the street. which resulted in a very broken box of donations. good job guys.

as long time readers are aware, eventually my heart, along with a big push in the right direction from my supervisor at the time, led me to leave new york and settle in boston. so i packed up my purple stapler and my label maker and headed to work – teen suicide prevention. you would think that i couldn’t possibly find anything there to add to my permenant collection (definitely not the pager – NO THANK YOU!). of course i took a lot of really powerful experiences and learned a lot about time management and crisis support and you know, i basically went to a conference about how to raise money for a non-profit that you care passionately about and then quit….so I took their fundraising practices too. but the real thing i took from suicide prevention – is post-it notes. my boss at the time had this practice – every time we needed to review an event (yes, there were events in suicide prevention) we would get a packet of post its. on poster boards throughout the room she would write “things we did well,” “things that need work” and “things that didn’t work at all and we will never do again” – clearly those weren’t her exact words – but you get the idea. then we would each get a few minutes to write one issue per post-it and place it on the wall under the appropriate category. [s]he’d group post-its together that go together and we’d discuss. i’ve used this technique before. but that’s not my only connection to the wonderful world of post-its. while working in suicide prevention i also discovered those larger post-its with lines that are that are like a quarter of a page. LOVE THEM. USE THEM.

but eventually i had to say so-long to suicide prevention (at some point, don’t we all?) and moved on to happy social work – along with my purple stapler, my labeled label maker and my large post-its. JBBBS was the land of swag – and it was awesome. best pens ever – its possible when i left i took 3 large handfuls so sustain ABN (it was the hardest part of leaving boston for the guy!). and of course my JBBBS fleece which has become my at work sweater and my JBBBS umbrella which protected me from the torential downpour yesterday. so here i am in san francisco – with my purple stapler, my labled label maker, my large post-its and my fleece…and i’m happy.

until today. my stapler is missing! it’s survived all these moves and even a summer of camp counselors borrowing said stapler and now…out of no where…it is no more. i haven’t given up hope. i’m like jessica simpson and her missing daisy – captured by coyotes. this can’t end well.

UPDATE: the stapler has been found!  somehow it ended up in one of the classrooms, but i refused to give up the search. sometimes it takes so little to make me beyond blissfully happy!