I think it’s safe to say it’s been years since I screwed up any one day as completely as I did this last Saturday. I’ll not itemize everything I did wrong here, but suffice it to say that it started with me trying to troubleshoot a relatively innocuous internal toilet leak, entering into a comically endless cycle of trying to make things better and actually making things worse, and ending with frighteningly massive plumbing bill.

(Now, said plumbing bill would eventually have come anyway, but it really couldn’t have come at a worse time.)

Mostly, I blame the general disorientation that comes with being sick.

* * *

I kind of value my lack of cognitive abilities while sick. It is a reminder to me that, even while healthy, my perceptions are not guaranteed to be accurate; my words are not guaranteed to convey my intent; my judgment is not guaranteed to be reliable.

I would do well to remember that focus is something you have to work for. Been a bit lazy about that lately (again, even while healthy).

* * *

To that end, I’ve gone ahead and slapped together a functional, but not particularly polished app to help me organize all the stuff I’m doing. (To recap: I’ve settled on a fixed rotation for my projects, so any time I sit down to work, I just do what’s at the top of my list, and after a fixed amount of time, I move it to the bottom of my list and work on the next thing. Not allowing myself to deviate from the rotation is important here.)

While it’s mostly pet projects, there are a few items of note in there that are more general.

• Games. As I mentioned in a previous post, I need to schedule in downtime or I won’t take it.
• Calls. This will sound like a really sterile way to approach it, but I’ve included calling relatives in my project rotation. Said relatives are themselves in a rotation, so I can make sure everyone gets a call on a regular basis. I want to keep in touch, I really do; but I literally forget that people exist if I don’t have frequent contact with them.
• Rescheduling. While my whole fixed-project-rotation thing generally works, I’m slow to make changes to the rotation. So now, questioning the contents of the rotation is itself part of the rotation. Yay checks and balances!

So there ya go. It’s been working out well the last few days.