Since I was still working on last week’s to-do list, I didn’t get around to making one for this week until today. Now I’m almost finished with Monday’s tasks. The trouble is, it’s Wednesday, and Wednesday is all but over already. I’m falling behind, and falling faster every day.

I have no excuses this time. None that I’m desperate enough to use, anyway. Right now it just seems to be happening. I work and work and put out product (as they say), and still my in-basket is filling up faster than my out-basket. This turn of events contradicts all laws of physics that I know of.

On the other hand, physics was my worst subject in school, until I got to college and took economics. But at least I believed in physics, even if I didn’t quite grasp it. I think now I didn’t try hard enough, because it seems like an elegant and necessary thing to know. I’d take a night class in it if I didn’t have to pass the math placement test (but let’s not go there).

Economics, on the other hand, seems a shade less applicable to the real world than alchemy, astrology and the curative power of snake oil. Economics is all theory, and it doesn’t matter if the theory is right or wrong, because you can’t prove it either way. It’s all a big lie that feeds on itself, so that whatever you do as a result of the theory changes the theory, which changes the result. It’s like the snake that swallows its own tail.

If physics worked the same way, I could probably tell you why my in-basket fills up faster the harder I work, and the out-basket never shows that I’ve done anything, even though I keep going through task after task (once I get around to writing the to-do list). Maybe Einstein could explain it. Didn’t he have a learning disability?

A couple of weeks ago I foolishly promised that the Big Project would be finished by the end of this month. I can’t say that I’ve made no progress, but there’s no way I’ll be able to keep that promise. I should have known better, I suppose, since I’ve never had it done before the middle of March. But I took most of the Monday holiday to work on it. The only problem with that strategy was that it ratcheted the daily work down to the rest of the week. That’s what you call swimming in quicksand. (Or maybe not. Ask Einstein about that, too.)