A note on my inability to keep up lately

There are some folks out there waiting for things from me. I’m so sorry that it’s taking longer than usual. I am so overwhelmed with a combination of the day job, family time at home, kids being sick, not getting sleep, and the various other ways in which life intercedes, that I am helplessly behind at this point. Two things clued me into this: first, I haven’t been updating as frequently here. That’s not out of a lack of anything to say, but simply a lack of time to say it. Or, a lack of energy when the time presents itself. Second, in looking at my list of unread items on my RSS feed–which I am usually pretty good at keeping up with–I noted over 400 unread items. It is very unlikely I’ll catch up with all of them.

There are several people waiting on me to read things from them. Please know that these things have not fallen off my list. They are there, prominently displayed as a reminder, each time I look at the list, of what is not getting done. I’ve even been delayed in responding to some email. Generally, my process is, if it is going to take me a while, I set it aside, but if it is something I can read in quick snatches of time, I ‘ll read it when I can. Thus, long pieces tend to get pushes, while shorter pieces get read while I’m taking the elevator from the 4th to 8th floor and vice versa. Or while I am sitting in a meeting room, waiting for a meeting to start, which is inevitably 5-10 minutes after the start time here. Believe me when I tell you that every fragment of my time is consumed by something. I’m even back to walking and reading at the time same at various points in the day.

The good news is that this can’t possibly last forever: either things will slow down out some point, or I collapse into some kind of insanity from which recovery will be unlikely. I’m hoping, of course, for the former.