you kill time, then it kills you

i'd always envied those people who rushed around every minute of the day attending meetings, accomplishing tasks, running errands, and generally being over-involved and crazy busy. i didn't envy their life, i just envied the fact that they had things to put into their planners.

see, i love planners. i like to pretend i have a life and day planners have quite the appeal for me. i love writing down to-do lists, knowing full well that i probably won't end up finishing even half the things i put down. mundane tasks such as "go get mail" was just as important as "finish homework." as long as i could schedule a life, i felt like i was being productive.

for that reason (among many others), college was great. there was always someplace i had to be. meet people to hang out, dance practice, culture show stuff, fellowship, dinners, the occassional class or job. my planner was my constant companion and it was full of useless tasks that invariably went unaccomplished. i felt good. i even kept my planner so i could look back upon each day with pride.

fast forward to now. throw in a 9-5 job and suddenly adding in even two weekly social commitments kills your time. weekends are for playing, week days for recovering and one event or two per week is quite a lot. of course, some super-humans even have the time to volunteer, work out, have side jobs, start families, and get graduate degrees at night. yes, we hate these people.

my dad volunteered to get me a handspring right when i finished college. i figured this would be the greatest organizational tool ever. an electronic day planner with a stylus? awesome. instead i used it mostly to play tetris on the subway. i don't think i've had a dedicated day planner since, since any obligations i've had could be easily rememebered in my head -- and then subsequently forgotten.

over the years, i've resorted to using my calendar to keep careful track of friends' birthdays; presumably to stay on top of people's lives once a year, but mostly to give my calendar a sense of purpose and worth. it's important your calendar doesn't feel neglected. this is one case where quantity surely trumps quality.

since quitting the job two weeks ago, i've committed to, or am about to commit to, about five new things. some of them involve blogging for sites other than this one, some of them are time commitments, some of them involve little personal projects, some of them were simply thrust upon me (taxes, etc). now i find my brain filled with a constant flurry of things i have to do, check lists i could now create, tasks that must be accomplished by a certain date.

of course, true to form, i find myself spending most of my day figuring out the best way to integrate outlook, backpack, google calendars, google apps, and the traditional sticky notes into a well oiled machine. meanwhile i've accomplished nothing today. i didn't even remember to get the mail.