PRIORITIES: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Doesn’t matter what I prioritise. These days, every item on the list takes until the 13^th of Never to deal with. (The 12^th of Never was overbooked.) I have IMPORTANT THINGS TO DEAL WITH. And I make a list of the IMPORTANT THINGS I HAVE TO DEAL WITH.
   Then, on the day in question, I resolve to tackle all of the important things. By day’s end, I’ve struggled out of the quicksand and barely managed one task. Then it’s quicksand for breakfast the next day, and back to it.
   How do I tackle problems? In one of two ways. Small doses. One big endless dose of toil. Those are my options. Obviously, I tackle a problem in one small dose that transforms into an elephantine dose of endless toil, trunk and trumpeting and all.
   It is October, and the days don’t grow shorter at all. The amount of daylight is a separate issue. Still, there is a feeling of compression. The persistent overpressure in sudden winds that tells you a downpour is imminent…
   You go looking for turmoil in the sky and find it shimmering in from over there, vast raindrops of it that haven’t reached you yet, flocks of crows on the wing that are not crows at all.
   A feeling of compression. The problem, whatever that is, comes in and lands on the time available, flattening it. An afternoon is devoured by a new technical problem. All the quick internet fixes don’t work, one after the other, and contribute to the devouring of that time-block.
   Now you are into another time-block, and consume coffee to stay sane. Sanity and coffee are two separate issues. They are linked by the imagination, statistical research by vested interests, and accidents of time and space.
   What do I give priority to? If I’m on a road, self-preservation gets my vote. Letters fall into the house. Almost all of these are official. I read those within a minute of discovering them. And I can take instant action or work things out at a gradual pace, depending on the message and the sender.
   So, no, I don’t have a backlog of letters to read. To reply to, sometimes. But incoming material is absorbed rapidly. The same is true of incoming digital messages. E-mail. I receive a steady trickle of electronic letters, notes, and, let’s face it, advertising.
   It is easy enough to deal with most e-mail notifications instantly. A few require research and cross-referencing. How many electronic messages do I receive in a day? Not many. That’s why it is easy to deal with those.
   If I wanted to, I could unsubscribe from many senders. As I run a boardgame/roleplaying game video channel on YouTube, I am subscribed to a whole bunch of game shops. I see the new releases on a weekly basis, and I see that many of these shops show off the same industry standard lists.
   But not identical lists. Shops have their own quirky variations or their particular special offers. Yes, I could cut down on the vast lowly trickle of messages. But I don’t. I am absolutely sitting on top of a pile of computer-delivered messages THAT I VANQUISHED.
   My aim is to reply to anything that calls for a reply…on the same day. Unless a message reaches me late in the day. Yet my attitude to e-mail is that it could take me days to reply. A week, even. I might just be too damned busy.
   In reality, it seems that I absorb physical and digital letters at the same fast pace. I give priority to incoming material.
   Not all of it. The other day I was accosted by an e-mail that had peculiar words crammed in there as its subject. I don’t open these things. Just read the by-line that catches the eye-line and lets me know what to sideline.
   Becca was back. Frankly, I never knew she’d been away. Becca was back, rejoining this site, and she was up for it. I’m sure there’d be a financial transaction to follow, involving the liberation of thousands of banknotes from my account.
   A woman who treats your public e-mail address as a dating-site is not to be trusted. Her name is Ivan, and his address lingers on the edge of Podmoskovye where he drinks vodka by the samovar.
   Other classic opening lines? The woman who saw me. Er. Walking around her apartment. I think that scam should have opened with her spotting me as I walked around my apartment, but I can’t be sure what was in her bot-mind. We may never know.
   E-mails that ask me if I received the first e-mail are automatically suspect. This is true of e-mails that begin HI, re-, or please deposit funds in my Berne account before your non-existent cat gets it in the whiskers.
   I receive so few telephone calls that I give those priority. Incoming letters and incoming calls tailed off in frequency with the rise of my e-mail use. Text messages may or may not be important, but they are given priority unless I hear them going off at UMPTY in the morning.
   Almost always, I’ll know who is texting me at that heathenish hour. Any response can wait until full daylight. Some automated message services are keen, what can I say?
   Yes, I like to have regular meals. But I’ll grab food when I can, if I suspect I won’t be able to grab it later. Or earlier. Holy Time Travel, Batman.
   My plan is to blog at the start of the month. Ideally, I’ll put an entry out on or around the first of the month. Circumstances intrude, naturally. And supernaturally. This month, on the first, I had priorities…
   And I had nothing to write about in the blog. Blank page stayed blank. I left it blank and moved on to many other things. Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, I stared at the desk in front of me and realised it could do with a tidy.
   A disorganised desk is a sign of a creative mind. This creative mind agreed with the notion that a blank desk is a sign of a blank mind. A small degree of clutter in loosely-defined areas is acceptable.
   What was unacceptable? The amount of clutter on this desk. I use scraps of paper to scribble notes on. What are all these bits of paper for? I checked expenses. That much I saw. But then I checked on my expenses electronically after checking my expenses on paper.
   And I realised I’d left a piece of paper at the bottom of the stack. One was for this year’s expenses and, shock horror, the other was for last year’s expenses. I sifted through the pile, having flashbacks about this item or that thing.
   At the end of this shocking procedure, I gave priority to shredding paper notes that I definitely no longer needed. I marched downstairs. It is important to keep your shreddable material on a separate floor, away from the shredder. This gives you time to think about what is or isn’t needed.
   I spent a very long minute shredding scraps of paper. And not just one scrap at a time. Several scraps at once. I gave priority to not overloading the mechanism. Earlier in the week, I’d dismantled the shredder to remove a troublesome piece of paper that jammed the mechanism on constantly.
   This was a fiddly fix, but a fix just the same.
   With nothing in mind to write about, I wrote about nothing. Another priority kicked in. Blog before the first week of the month is up. I try to stick to that one. It’s for the best. Backlogs are no good. They don’t clear themselves.
   How would I deal with 500 e-mails a day? I like to think I wouldn’t get into that situation in the first place, the second place, or the last place. E-mail startles me if it arrives like a bunch of grapes. In a cluster. Six e-mails at once. That’s unusual.
   It isn’t. The cluster is coincidental. That’s all. No, I wouldn’t manoeuvre myself into receipt of 500 e-mails in a day. What if something on social media blows up, and there’s a corresponding e-mail stampede?
   Twitter has been comatose on life-support for several years, now, and I feel it is unlikely that I’ll cause a sensation. Not even through a case of mistaken identity. I’m often mistaken for the Venezuelan rocket scientist of the same name. He gets my tax bills. I occasionally receive his pay.
   E-mail by Twitter is the dreaded Direct Message. Yes, I give priority to looking at those. As time passes, I receive fewer and fewer spam DM, so that’s something. Most DM are quick to read and to respond to.
   I’d quite forgotten the junk e-mail. I go there to rescue genuine messages of great importance that the filter decides must be rubbish. Periodically I check the junk folder, just as, periodically, I check my telephone…
   Not for messages, but to see that the machine is still holding a decent charge. I give priority to recharging the telephone and the electric toothbrush – sometimes simultaneously. Luckily, I’ve yet to brush my teeth with a telephone, or deal with a wrong number on my toothbrush.
   It’s been a million years since I had to deal with a wrong number. The guy was sober. A million years before that one, I took another wrong number from a woman whose brain was being slowly sandblasted by Lambrini and her idea of an evil cackle.
   I give priority to blocking those incoming numbers as soon as I end the calls.
   And I give priority to writing a blog post that runs 1,500 words. I see I’ve passed that finishing-line, achieved the objective of blogging within the first week of the month, and I’ve wrought nothing much out of nothing much in this piece of writing. But then, spinning something out of nothing is an occupational hazard that I give priority to.