I'd turn back if I were you. No, wait. Give me another chance. I should make more sense tonight, since I overslept by forty minutes this morning. Forty minutes! And it would have been even longer if the phone hadn't rung. It was a hardware supplier asking where we wanted him to ship our nuts and bolts. The Boss had sent him an order but forgotten that bit of important information.

Even with the extra sleep I didn't do well today. That's probably because the "extra" sleep was tacked onto the end of one of those intense nights when the least important detail becomes like a caraway seed in your wisdom tooth. I kept flashing on something I had to do today, something I'd apparently forgotten yesterday. I can't be more specific because by the time I woke up (forty minutes late), I'd forgotten it all over again.

This was payroll day, so my time was committed before my eyes jerked open with the chirping of the cordless phone. So what if I'd let yesterday's sins of omission rattle around in my brain all night until they were worn down to a whisper? I had a mission, and it kept me anchored. I hadn't been left to decide for myself how to spend the day, and if I'd been able to formulate the thought I'd have been glad of it.

The payroll was only one item on my to-do list, though. Some days I can check off several tasks and feel satisfied. Today I had to settle for one and feel relieved. I'll take relief most days. The razor's edge I've been on keeps me from relaxing, unless I have a well-defined target. The difference on payroll day is that I have to hit the target, no excuses. I can't let anything slide, because other people are depending on me, and they're not disposed to wait for their paychecks if I don't feel like writing them.

Tomorrow it'll be back to the year-end accounting, some of which has a deadline next week — which might as well be next year if my mind gets to wandering in the wrong direction. Momentum is everything, and the will to keep going is the only thing that can give me the momentum to finish. I hereby commit myself to doing the best I can, until that's no longer good enough. Then I'll do better.

If an election weren't coming up, I'd go into a news blackout mode. I'm so tired of crime, money, crimes about money, crimes about religion, even what's going on lately in sports and politics, that I could turn off CNN until Connie Chung arrives in a few weeks. By then, maybe there would be some good news, or at least some news that wouldn't keep me awake.