Oh yeah, I typed this while I reconciled my checkbook

For the time being at least, I have once again managed to fill my life up to the brim. Some of you, of course, may remember me occasionally whining about this problem back in my days as a weekly newspaper columnist. Okay, okay…it was more than occasionally…all right, fine, in reality, I actually used up most of the free time I had by engaging in an extended whine about how busy I was. As a result, I can almost hear droves of online readers “X”-ing out of this blog right now. (For those of us bloggers who like to pretend that lots of people are actually reading this twaddle, “droves” translates to roughly five people.)
The days of 16-to-21-hour Tuesdays, however, are lodged deep in my past. As a matter of fact, if I get through this week, my life will morph into something much more relaxed.
A combination of opening week of the fall Opera House show and a spate of photography and video side projects however, finds me searching for ways to squeeze 28 hours into 24.
I’ve tried sacrificing more sleep, but I can’t seem to get by on less than six, and even that has me occasionally waking to, say, 16 lines of “ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff…” at the office, when I briefly lose consciousness while working on the computer. We should all be very thankful I’m not a surgeon.
Since I can’t afford to lose any more sack time, I find myself multi-tasking for most of my waking hours. I check my email while I eat my breakfast. During lunch I try to read my newspaper. My evening meal is for placing photo orders or printing an invoice and maybe taking time to deal with emails I’ve ignored during the day.
While I drive I either catch up with the world’s current events on the radio or listen to an audio book.
I self-medicate while my toast is burning in the morning, and when I bend over to pull on my shoes I pet the cat.
I’ve even taught myself to breathe and gain weight at the same time.
And this week, just to save a little more time, I trimmed my column from the usual bloated 700-800 words, to under 400.
And look at this, in the process, I saved you some time too…