Deadlines, Real and Imagined

Writing this blog is completely voluntary, of course. No one is paying me to do it, no one is expecting me to do it. Which is why, when things are especially crazy at work, I post here later in the day.

Today has been one of those days. Having waited all day for a logical stopping point, I've finally given up. I'm writing now at an illogical stopping point — meaning that I still have work to complete before close of business.

Ironically, it's often when I telecommute that I don't post here until later in the day.  Overcompensation, a different routine, real deadlines interfering with imagined ones.

But which are more important? The real ones demand response, will get it one way or the other. The imagined ones can slip away. Does that not make them the ones that need me most?

Seems that way to me.

(Rushing here, rushing there. But at least I'm not riding Metro today.)

Shutdown!

It's the first day of October — and the first day of government shutdown.  I'm imagining what the Metro will look like tomorrow (today, employees must still report to work, only to fill out some papers and then go home).

I imagine the trains and buses will be emptier but the roads busier. Home improvement stores will be bustling as the furloughed ones use this time to catch up on projects.

One doesn't have to live here long to realize what a company town this is. A company town the business of which is government. A business that has shut down.

Limbo

An incomplete project puts me in limbo. It's not so bad after all. I grew up with dim images of limbo as a soft cottony place where unbaptized babies frolicked happily, unaware that they would never see the face of God. The teaching was, if I recall, people in limbo will never go to heaven, but neither will they go to hell. And they won't suffer. Limbo, then, is a land beyond time and expectations. But the thing about limbo was -- and is -- you can't will yourself to be there. You have to arrive accidentally.

Deadlines

It's April 15, so deadlines are on my mind. Not just today's filing deadline, but deadlines in general. My life is built around them, and has been forever, it seems. When I was a student there were tests and papers looming regularly on the horizon. Ditto for the few years after college when I was a teacher. Then I became a journalist, a business with deadlines built into its DNA.
Through the years I've come to think of deadlines as my friends. While I rail about them, especially as they're drawing near, they keep me on task, they keep me honest -- and they keep me sane. My major problem is taking on too many of them. But yesterday, I turned down a freelance assignment because I knew I couldn't finish it in time. Is this wisdom? Is this folly? I'm not sure. But it's certainly proof of the power of deadlines.