Gold in Chaos, or, Finding Old Books Under Thick Dust

I’m neck deep in the de-construction of my office so the remodellers can come in this Wednesday and construct my luxurious new office, complete with two hanging monitors, glass-door bookcases, wooden filing cabinets, floor to ceiling shelving, and much more. The end result will be a work of art I can sit in.

For now, though, my office is chaos.

I haven’t completely cleaned out my office yet, but so far there are piles of books and papers all over the floor right outside the French doors. I’m moving stuff from the inner office to the outer library area. What a mess. I didn’t even start moving books for an entire week because the thought of it was so overwhelming. Now that I’m working at this cleaning and moving a little every day, it’s totally overwhelming.

How did I accumulate so much stuff?

Nerissa reminded me that most geniuses have messy offices. I thought back to guys I knew in college who never cleaned their rooms. They weren’t geniuses. Not even close. Of course, leaving your clothes and beer bottles on the floor isn’t exactly what I’m doing in my office. So maybe there is a difference.

I do know that since my world is books, it’s only natural that I would have a lot of them. I used to go to the library when I was broke. Now I built my own library right here. I have huge collections of books on marketing, fitness, hypnosis, psychology, metaphysics, and magic. Thousands of them. I’d like to say I’ve read all of them. I haven’t. I often read enough to get the gist of a book, and then put it aside. Sometimes I never get to a book, though I long to one day.

There’s gold here, of course. I have rare books, signed books, limited edition books; I have books signed by P.T. Barnum, the great showman and circus promoter. I have one copy of his autobiography with a news release he typed up and signed still stuck in it. It’s a treasure.

There are many treasures here. Another favorite is How to Turn People into Gold by Kenneth Goode. He wrote numerous books and was well known in the 1930s or so. His book on Showmanship in Business is wonderful. I often wonder what happened to him.

My all time favorite book is The Magic of Believing by Claude Bristol. I have two signed copies of the very early editions of the book, which apparently was first self-published. That classic is still in print today, while Mr. Bristol is long gone.

Of course, anyone who knows my work knows I love Robert Collier. I have every known book by him, including of course his legendary The Robert Collier Letter Book. I was an okay writer before that book; I was a Hypnotic Writer after it. I also have a rare brief biography of him that his daughter sent me decades ago.

Then there are the books by Walter Dill Scott, the early 1900s psychologist who wrote the first books on how the mind works, aimed at advertisers. I still love his classic The Psychology of Advertising.

I also love the old school publicists, such as Harry Reichenbach, who promoted movies with wild stunts in the early days of films. His unfinished auobiography is a real joy to read. It’s called Phantom Fame.

I have virtually every book by Alan Abel, a famous hoaxer who today is a friend of mine. He’s a true genius at getting publicity for events. Barnum would have loved him and his humbugs. He’s the brain behind the old movement to clothe animals — a fake organization that the media took seriously for five years. Abel wrote about that event in The Great American Hoax. I so respect Alan Abel that I just hired him to come up with a wild idea to promote the living daylights out of my next book (due out March 7th).

The list of gold goes on: I have many cherished signed books by Neville, the mystic who inspired my website at www.AttractaNewCar.com I even have one extrememely rare book by him, probably his first published work ever, signed, that I paid over $500 to grab on eBay. I later reprinted the book. It’s called At Your Command. (Amazon sells it.)

There are also dozens of audio packages here published by Nightingale-Conant, the company that produced my own program, The Power of Outrageous Marketing. www.nightingale.com

But by and large, the great population of things over-filling my office are books.

I love books. Obviously. But that’s not why I’m writing this post.

I’m writing this post because it’s a way to take a break from the chaos. It’s a way to escape.

Oh, I know the chaos is here. It’s at my feet, behind my back, whispering to me, calling me back…waiting for me to scream out…“I’m coming, already!”

No wonder I’m spending $166 on a bottle of hard booze.

This chaos is driving me to drink.

It’s also driving me to eat.

Nerissa and I went out for dinner last night and I had two bites of cheescake — my first dessert in a year and a half! I didn’t lose 80 pounds by eating desserts!

Breathe, Joe, just b-r-e-a-t-h-e.

A clean office reflects a clean mind.

That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway.

A clean office reflects a clean mind.

Though I think Einstein had a messy office.

Guess I better get back to cleaning this office, less I get drunk and fat and just keeping writing in this blog, forever delaying what needs to be done.

Joe
www.mrfire.com