I am Peter’s outright fear of his to-do list.

So I was going to post something about computer games the next time I appeared in the wide and untamed lands of Blogistan, but time has been a bit short for putting together the second part of that particular expedition. Navigating the bog of deep thinking requires time to rethink and edit, and time’s been at a premium this week.

I keep casting furtive glances at my to-do list and it keeps scolding me for not getting things done. My sole achievements this week have been marking student assignments for the dayjob I actually like, and finally sending off a round of emails for a gaming project that I was meant to send back in January before Brisbane flooded and things got derailed.

There is a Flotsam story due this week. Today, in fact. I’m running late, despite my best efforts, and thus I am frustrated. Very frustrated. There have been attacks of itinerant insomnia. And so part two of Emotion and Video Games essay gets pushed back until next week, after the paying gigs are done with.

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The worst part about being busy is that people ask me to do things and I end up saying yes because I’m too busy to spend the time figuring out how to say no. I’m currently looking at the list of three or four things that I really don’t want to do, get no meaningful benefit out of doing, and generally suck at. One of the women at my less-than-pleasant day job keeps asking me to read her son’s university essays. And so I breathe a sigh of relief when I check my email at two AM aren’t there *aren’t* essays sitting there, waiting to be corrected.

No, I don’t know why I agree to do this. I suspect it’s one of those things that’ll be easy as hell to cut from the to-do list.

Of course, it’s going to be replaced with “learn to say no more often.”

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There are currently but five weeks left until I’m done with my teaching gig at University of Queensland, which makes me sad on several levels because it’s been quite enjoyable to actually go and tutor writing again (so much so that I’m saying this *after* marking the latest round of assignments, which is not my favourite part of the job). Plus, the money’s good. Seriously good.

On the plus side, in six weeks time, I’ll get my Thursday Night RPG session back (assuming the players still want to play) and I’ll stop being twitchy about the fact that I’m only running one RPG session a week these days. And I’ll be broke again, which means I either write or live on the other dayjob’s paycheque, which isn’t really the kind of money that you’re supposed to live on.