I was painting the kitchen ceiling and in between brushstrokes came upon a newspaper article headed How Dangerous is Jordan B Peterson/The Right Wing Professor Who Hit a Hornets’ Nest? And I thought, “Who the hell is Jordan B Peterson?”

And so I looked up Jordan B Peterson. And I was still painting the ceiling at 3 am as I listened, while I painted, to back-to-back You Tube videos of his talks.

In fact, I’ve spent much of 2018 cleaning up my room. I’d already figured that I was going to get nowhere very fast unless I established dictator-like control over my chaos. And it is no surprise to me that as I was painting the kitchen ceiling, bracing myself to the knowledge I had six other ceilings to paint (not to mention the walls) I was introduced to Dr Jordan B Peterson, the doyen of Order and Chaos.  As he has himself said, once you start cleaning up your room something will turn up to help you in the task.

Actually, when I write that it came as no surprise to me that while in the process of painting the ceiling – restoring order to chaos – that I was introduced to Jordan B Peterson (in the form of this atrocious newspaper article) – it was a great shock. It is always a great shock to my system when something synchronous happens. Because it’s always accompanied by a special kind of energy and that isn’t mine.

I’m looking forward eagerly to those other ceilings (and walls, floors, doors) because I can listen to Jordan B Peterson talks while I paint. Oh, and his first book is called Maps of Meaning. Given my predilection for mapping, that’s no mean synchronous event I’ve had here. And double oh! – it’s no coincidence I was painting the ceiling. If you’re going to clean up your room, your own ceiling – your head – is going to get cleaned up too. Which is the point, really.

So, my wishes for you in 2019 are:

Go Clean Up Your Room!

Ann