Accounting is a strange thing. It's very appropriately titled, to be an accountant. My job entails, most prominently if not oversimplified, accounting for things... primarily money. Which mostly means that a really big part of my job are those little window-envelopes that say "Attention Accounts Payable" or "Bill to:" or something invoice-interpretable. And I slice them open and stack them and sort them and ACCOUNT for them on a spreadsheet I type up weekly.

Something sprang from this process, a quirk about myself that I didn't even know I had. I need color. I don't mean I prefer it, I don't mean it brightens my life but I can live without it, I mean I need it. Flipping through hundreds of invoices, all in black-and-white, 12-point Times New Roman font is exhausting if I don't get to decorate my life with little splashes of pink post-it note or neon green highlighter.

Color has taken on a whole new importance to me lately. For one thing, my little colorful set of office supplies serves its primary purpose: They catch my attention. If there's a 3'' orange post-it note on a stack of faxes I know it means I should read that before I do anything else. Or if one word is highlighted on a document I know my eyes should be drawn to it before trudging through eight paragraphs to get to it. But it's also done wonders for my organizational skills: pen-wise, my boss always signs things off in blue ink. So if I see a blue set of initals at the bottom of a page I know that this stack of whateveritis is probably ready to be sent out. Blue, then, has become a color of purpose. Also: the brighter the color I choose to mark something or highlight with, the more important it probably is. Green highlighter is really just for my own knowledge, not anything I need to worry about but more of just an FYI. Yellow highlighter is a little more severe... put it on your to-do list but it's nothing to write home about. Orange highlighter means I should probably take care of this before I leave today, because someone is probably waiting for whatever it is. And if I use pink or red highlighter, oh my gosh I had better get on that as fast as my puny typing skills will allow.

It's also more of just a welcome relief than anything, though. Paperwork after more paperwork after more paperwork and emails and faxes and invoices and memos and blah blah blah gets really old really fast without a bright green paperclip to hold it all together. I sent reports to our corporate office held together with colored paperclips, and I hoped that someone opened our interdepartmental delivery envelope and had a moment of satisfaction thanks to the departure from the traditional metal nonsense. I'd like to believe I brightened someone's day that way.

In any case, let's hear it for color. Because honestly, I don't know how the real world, let alone the corporate world, could ever do without it.