Completion

At work today I achieved something. In anticipation of the arrival tomorrow of a company that is going to shred a shoulder-high mound of documents that fills a parking slot in the basement garage, I finished putting in order the one storage room that needed putting in order.

It has taken me a little over a year and a half to create ex nihilo both an archive of digitized documents that I cleaned (removed staples and paper clips), read, organized, scanned to PDF and named; and an Access database that inventories over 400 banker boxes filled with files. The whole thing was done organically. I had no road map going in.

Taking the light rail back from the airport last winter I talked with a physician from Canada who had recently finished digitizing all the files in his two-doctor medical practice. He said he hired a company that specialized in digital conversion, and they came in and did it in like five weeks. I don't think they named the files; they just cleaned and scanned and provided an electronic file software. (I flirted with getting a filing software but then decided that Windows Explorer was all that was needed.) I can't remember what he said he paid, but I think it was more than $20,000 Canadian. Even if it were double it still would be significantly cheaper than employing me for 20 months. The big difference though, I would like to imagine, is that I was confronted with if not total chaos quite a lot of it; that, and I am used as a backup to the bookkeeper and to the receptionist (both older ladies, one of whom racks up the PTO); and, last but not least, if furniture needs to be moved or a ceiling tile replaced or there is unexpected flooding in the building, I'm the man.

So when the last box was brightly labeled with its appropriate sticker and marked in indelible black ink, I, in the grimy and unheated basement storage room off the parking garage, stepped back a few steps, took a look, and thought, "Thank, God. I'm done." Now, as soon as we relocate to the new building near the airport in SeaTac, I can start looking for another job.