Thursday, February 7, 2008

Black Holes and Balance Beams

Despite my excitement about all that is going on right now, there are unfortunate consequences. The biggest casualty of my constant desire to put my fingers in every possible pie is e-mail. My e-mail boxes just keep getting bigger and bigger. This disease affects no only my personal e-mail (>800 unread messages that span the years since I created the e-mail address) but also my work e-mail. Often, people will think that I am ignoring them, or perhaps that I don't care, but no... the e-mail has just vanished into the black hole that is my inbox. I feel I don't have the time to respond appropriately, so the message sits and waits. I am hoping that sometime soon I will learn how to stop time, or at least slow it down to get caught up... but the reality is that if I learned how to do that, I would just try to do even more things creating some sort of infinite loop.

The other consequence is that some weeks everything hits at once. This week and next are such weeks. I have worked long hours almost every day this week trying to finish up a document before I go out of town. Am I required to... No... but I am a perfectionist and I want to produce a good product, so I work to get the best possible product out before I go to a space conference next week. But wait! If I am working late, that means I am not evaluating applications, reading e-mail relating to aforementioned space conference, doing laundry, paying the bills, getting my hair cut, or any of the other myriad of things that I have to do before I leave on Monday. It all makes me tired.

Really, I am not complaining. I know it sounds like I am, but I'm not. I broadcast this out to the universe so you can all understand a bit more about me, and the things I do to myself. One day, I am going to learn how to balance time, work, play, etc... but I wouldn't place any bets on when. Until then, off I go to fight another day.

1 comment:

R. Glipglorp said...

Balance is my theme for the year, and damn, is it tricky.

Please tell me JWST is really a device for slowing or stopping time? Pleeease? :)