It lives with me. I live with it, begrudgingly, against my will, unable to bring myself to fix it once and for all.
I shape it. It shapes me.
It obeys the laws of physics. Unless supported by a horizontal surface, it descends to the floor. I have never lived in a room that had quite enough horizontal surfaces.
I try to contain it. This never happens. I make plans to clean it up properly. This also never happens.
Every now and then, an assignment or a project causes me to concentrate specific parts of the mess in one area. I pretend this helps me focus. It works, kind of. After the project, the collected mess is immediately released back into the global mess pool. It might be swapped out for another mess concentration for use on the next project.
It defines me. And I define it.
My vision of heaven is a room lined with wide, horizontal shelves, with lots of wide, long tables.