It ends not with a bang, but a whimper

Suddenly it went from 9am to 11pm. A to-do list barely tackled. A day I can barely account for. Piles of Christmas cards that need to be filled out. Over 200 messages in my inbox. Projects to write. Research to do. Calls to make. Connections to maintain. Where does time go?

While I am often good at beating the clock and getting things done (even if only barely under the wire), I still lack basic time management skills. In a fast-paced environment where I have no choice but to move, move, move I do. But given the choice to move or not and I almost always choose: not. It's not one of my most flattering traits and something I still struggle to overcome and decipher. Part is I am much more externally driven than I like to admit. Part is that I like structure and keep it well (until I get bored and break it all to hell... but that's another entry). Part is that... part is that I am a horrible, horrible daydreamer. Some is just classic, cliche procrastination and some is that I am... I'm... I'm a premature evaluator. It's true. I do a poor job of hiding it. There it is. Yesterday I spent an hour looking at personalized notecards. Why? Because I said that as soon as I found myself a "permanent" place (in my world meaning one that I didn't plan to leave before moving in) that I'd buy myself some. So, seeing how I'll be living in the States in, oh, 12 months, it's a fine time to start looking. Crane's has a nice site and good designs, fyi.

Work is busy and yet not. A pending large project proposal will likely eat my next two weeks. I am not happy about this - it's a good project and my organization can do it but... poor planning on their part has meant an emergency on mine. This pisses me off. At the same time my building receptionist/door person has decided that her son needs English help. They should teach a class on getting Bulgarians, especially Bulgarian women, to understand "no." I mean, I tried. I even made my Bulgarian worse than it really is (which is a SKILL, I tell you). It didn't work. Again, her poor planning = my time crunch. My other job depends on the verdict of a project proposal, but for now I just uncomfortably wait and worry what to do if it doesn't come through.

All of these happy events are added to me trying to finish a humor writing course. My life was fairly dead - and even fairly amusing - until I paid $400 to use free time and be amusing. Now, I can't seem to do either. Part is that whole time management thing. Part is that after dealing with projects and logistics all day, a girl can feel really uninteresting, uncreative and unfunny. In fact, I am feeling very "un" lately overall. Part is that when I'm supposed to do something, I suddenly don't want to. For example, I read Foreign Affairs for fun, until I took a class that made me read it - then I read everything and anything else but that. (How can one girl be externally driven AND not like authority so much that she stubbornly ignores it even when it asks her to do something she already likes? Now you're getting to understand me more... or not.) Part is that if someone tells me to think of something funny my brain immediately produces the saddest event I can recall. My brain is a real brat like that - only it's a clever brat and I've not quite learned how to trick it into producing specific things on command. I can write... just not with humor. This is an issue.

My day ends with me entering a restless night where I'll think about all the things I need to do, want to do, should do, could do, might do, won't do, will do... and what kind of sofa I'll buy for my new apartment next year. I'm thinking something bold and funky, though my notecards will be more classic.