Saturday, December 31, 2011

Prelude 2012: Beginning Again

For the third year in a row, I am attempting the Paper Diet. Last year, I abandoned it after some 100 days. This year, I'm really committed to seeing it through. The rules are basically the same. I will attempt to get through the year setting tomorrow with only 5,837 sheets of paper. As before, because I’m sane, I’ve decided that certain categories of paper simply don’t count. For example, paper used for bodily fluid clean up is off limits towards the total count. It also doesn't count if I use a timesheet provided to me by my fiscal intermediary.

However, if I screw up and forget to get new timesheets when the old ones get taken in it comes off my count. Therefore, I will try to avoid this. Of course, if need be I'm going to do it because I don't want anyone to be paid late due to my stupidity. I see that as being a major source of paper consumption that I must avoid.

The results from last year which, even though I abandoned the diet not even one third of the way through the year, were promising, are: I still have four unopened reams of paper. I'm going use those until they're gone because 1) I don't have the money to go buy a new box for no reason and 2) it goes against the idea of the blog to waste four perfectly good reams of paper for no reason.

Wish me luck and stick to it ofness, which I'm not sure is even a word, with this blog starting tomorrow.