Are things spiraling into control?

When I first started at SVS, I was looking for a way to get organized. One night, while working in the data center, I came across an article for implementing a system called Getting Things Done (http://www.davidco.com/) using gmail. Since I like gmail, I was interested. What sold me on the system was that things I wanted to do, like read a book or play a video game got to go on the to-do list along with things that needed to be done, like laundry or cutting the grass.

So for a while, all was well. I managed to do things like arrange my schedule to see the Police play Wriggly Field since I was unable to see them play Churchill Downs since that date conflicted with Suzanne's wedding. As I kept coming up with more and more things that needed to be done every week, I discovered that I was mostly just keeping up with day to day activities and (mostly) getting once a week and once a month tasks done.

Things really spiraled out of control when I had strep a few weeks ago. I didn't feel like doing anything useful, and even once I felt better, I still didn't feel like doing anything useful. I was getting frustrated by having a lot of cool stuff on my to-do list that I wasn't getting to. Learing a new ray-tracer, finishing my homemade chess men, learing new programming languages, learning Japaneese, learning how to draw/sketch.

So, I've dedicated a Friday night to getting things back on track. So far so good. I've actually gotten a bit more done tonight (this blog post being one of those things) than would strictly have been necessary according to my plan. And that's even after taking a break to watch a VH1 show on the top 20 one hit wonders of the eighties. (Seriously, 99 Luftballons, Take on Me, Tainted Love, 867-5309/Jenny and She Blinded Me with Science were all better than Come on Eileen)