One look at my year-long to-do list would reveal a problem:  namely, that there isn't enough time in a year to get to everything on the list.  In addition, a year is a long time, and things invariably pop up that are unintended.  The recent book challenge was one of them.  Yeah, I had put writing on the list, but that kind of book was unanticipated. 

What I've done recently, is that I've cut the year up into segments of one to three months.  The deadlines are just as arbitrary as anything else I do, but it helps to show where I am, and makes the list look more manageable.  My success has been limited however, because well, there's still too much to do in such a short span of time.  Some of the issues have been overestimating what I could possibly do, personal drama, family drama, and outside events.  I'm not really going to go into details.  May, as one example, is a horribly bad month for me. 

Oh yeah, this is May.

That being said, it hasn't been just failure after failure.  I've gotten my reading and my DVR more under control.  While neither are perfectly managed, they are better so.  Life is about learning, and the simple fact is that I want to do too much all at once.  Sometimes it leads to overload. 

The thing is that I don't have many day to day tasks.  Reading the paper.  Hygiene.  Eating.  That's about it.  All of the other things I work on tend to be bigger, usually much bigger.  Laid out end to end, my DVR last week would have required more than seventy-four hours to get through all the stuff saved on it.  While some hours are worth more than others, I now have twenty percent free where I had three last week.

I will admit that watching television doesn't really pass as work, but it is often an effort that must be balanced against other demands of my time.  Writing is something that can go on forever - I know, I've seen it.  The task there is also to break it into more manageable segments without making it more work than it needs to be.  The simple truth is that I'm still learning how to write and learning how to make it all come together.  Being a dungeon master for an RPG game was good experience, but all the time in the world doesn't mean you get more done.  It means each story can be endlessly polished.  Forever.

I tend to babble.  Anyway, things seem to be happening more, even with the whole May thing going on.  Most of that stuff is over now, I hope.  The rest is just life.

- Jim