Sometimes all you can do is shut out the rest of the world and get on with what needs to be done. That’s not always easy, but I’ve been putting off doing the W-2s for the company, only because other assignments have been dropped in my lap every time I would almost get started on them.

And that happened again today, but with a difference. This time it happened after I’d already started, so I ignored the new business and got on with what I was doing, and kept going until I was finished. If I’d allowed myself to be sidetracked again, I’d still have to try to plan a time to do them, so I drew the line in the sand, once and for all.

The government doesn’t make it very easy to get these things done, though. The Social Security website is a nightmare to navigate, with contradictory instructions and links that take you to some planet where they speak a completely incomprehensible language. That’s another reason I hadn’t followed through before today — all the false starts. Now the job is done, though, and I can get on to the other forty-’leven things on my to-do list. Starting Monday.

As usual, the best thing I could have done was shut out the rest of the world. Yesterday the noise of life in general seemed so loud that I could hardly function at all. I seriously thought, in the middle of the afternoon, about crawling back into bed, not because I was ill, or even tired (though I was), but just to make everything stop.

So often I let myself get distracted, and I end up running in place until it seems impossible to catch up again. I usually work with music playing, or something background-y on the television. That stuff doesn’t keep me from working, but every once in awhile I feel like silence. Today silence was so soothing that it’s probably the only way I would have got as much done as I did.

There’s nothing like a break from the din, even if the din is sometimes what it takes to get going in the first place. It’s not that the music slows me down, because it often has the opposite effect. But today I needed the silence, and it helped.