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Today has gone on for a very, very long time. Already by noon it felt as though I’d been awake for ages. Now it’s 4:00 and it feels as though I’ve been awake for two days straight. Time is strange like that; sometimes a day disappears right out from under you, and other days you can’t seem to bring a day to a close with any amount of patience.

Things I haven’t done today that I could and probably should have done today:

  • Do a bunch of work… for work… that needs to be done and that I’ll be hearing about (and it’s not being done) by very early next week.

  • Go to my taekwondo class or at least do some sort of physical exercise.

  • Work on the novel I started at least fifteen years ago and continually say it’s one of my few remaining bucket list goals to finish.

  • Clean the house, wash the dishes, do the laundry, etc.

  • Read a book, including any of the many books I’ve bought over the last few years saying “oh I’m sure I’ll want to read that shortly” without ever reading any of them.

  • Update this website, which I used to refresh roughly once every year for its first decade or so but which now hasn’t been refreshed in six years.

  • Check my mailbox, where I am waiting for some important mail.

Things I did do today:

  • Lay around.

  • Watch a lot of Inspector Lewis, which I’ve seen (every episode) at least a dozen times.

  • Eat some junk food.

  • Boot up four of the old laptops that are hanging around, just to see their screens on and their operating systems load, because I am stuck in many ways in 1995 and still find that to be magical somehow.

Yes, I have a minor cold and I could use that as an excuse for, say, not going to taekwondo or being tremendously productive, but let’s be frank, that’s not good enough excuse to have done nothing.

And yet I also know I will do exactly nothing for the rest of the day today, and then will try to squeeze it all in tomorrow and will fail on many points because there won’t be enough hours in the day.

I need to grow up. But at 46 and PhD, if I haven’t grown up by now, I’m not sure there’s much optimism to be had about the prognosis.

I think this is what wives are for, and why they seem congenitally wired to nag. Because if men don’t get nagged, we often won’t do anything at all unless there are power tools, electronics, junk food, or beer to play with.