in the slipstream of my possibilities

I may be the only person in the world who still listens to Bush's last album ('Golden State') semi-regularly; it's been in my car's CD player for at least at week, so I've been rocking out to such fabulous songs as 'Speed Kills', 'Head Full of Ghosts', 'Float', and 'My Engine is With You'. I need to burn a copy of the Institute CD that I bought from the iTunes store while I was in India; it would make good driving music, but it's too hard for when I'm working, so I don't listen to it much at work. Yes, I have terrible taste.

Today, I went to work, was feeling sick in the afternoon, and so came home early. I still don't feel great, and I'm willing to bet money that I'll end up catching the vicious plague that Claude was carrying the other night, but we shall see. I did nothing for most of the afternoon, but then started to put into practice that 'Getting Things Done' book by writing down all of the tasks, big or small, that are pending in my personal life. I decided to wait to tackle the work stuff until tomorrow, but writing down (without doing) everything on my mental map of possible projects resulted in a stack of paper about 1.5 inches thick. This is because this dude suggests writing down everything in this initial set-up phase on a separate sheet of paper; this enables better and more efficient processing when you start doing, filing, or deferring later. Presumably, this is because if everything is in a stack, you are more likely to do what he wants you to do and focus fully on the item on the top of the list, rather than constantly scanning to look for a more appealing task.

So, I have my stack of paper, and tomorrow I need to make a similar stack of paper for all of my work stuff, and then spend the rest of tomorrow and Sunday sorting and accomplishing and doing all those fun things. I must say, though, that I already feel a little better (mentally, not physically)--I think he's write that writing things down in a system that you trust and have a plan for reevaluating and tackling helps to get all of those floating ideas out of your mental space and into a neutral zone. Now, instead of reminding myself every day that I want to order bookshelves for my living room, even though I have no intention of doing so until I get my next bonus, I can just put it in my 'Someday/Maybe' list and ignore it until later.

Alternatively, I'm just using this as a more elaborate method of procrastination, but we shall see. Now, though, it's time to go to bed.