SOLSC 10: Getting Organized

            After opening all the mail accumulated while I was away, I simply put it into piles. Today I sorted through the piles, and gave in to my propensity to make list

Magazines

1. 2 New York Review of Books

2. 3 New Yorkers. The anniversary issue at the end of February has always been a reproduction of the original cover in 1925, showing a dandy named Eustace Tilley.

That issue this year is a satire of that cover.

 

3. 4 The Nation

4. Poets & Writers

5. Milk Street (a new cooking magazine by the founder of Cook’s Illustrated)

6. 6 newsletters, including the Hightower Lowdown, Church & State, Healthy Aging, and Mind, Mood & Memory

Money

            Then there were my pension checks, bank statements, and donation receipts for tax reporting. Also a bill from a doctor who saw my husband briefly in his last days in the hospital, 15 months ago. Can it really take Medicare that long to process bills?

            Finally, solicitations for donations from the Center for Reproductive Rights, the American Humanist Association, Planned Parenthood of New York City, the Hospice Support Fund, and the ACLU. I’ll give money to some of these organizations after I check out the ones I don’t known on Charity Navigator. 

The Perils of Being a Dilettante

I'm very undisciplined and easily distracted. Unless I have deadlines from others (like going to an office, having specific work to do), it's too easy use up my time doing things I like doing, but that aren't essential to what I want to do. I could easily spend two hours reading the New York Times (in print) and then another hour or more playing Luxor Maj-jongg or Bejeweled, and another hour or more reading Facebook and clicking on the links friends have posted, and another hour or more reading all my e-mail and the various links other friends have posted -- and there you have it: almost seven hours just reading stuff that's interesting (many things are interesting to me) but not focused.

So I have to learn to set priorities, my own priorities. If I'm semi-retiring to write, writing has to be the first thing I do. If it's not supporting my writing, the reading has to wait. Writing, the writing group, reading books on writing, talking about writing: those are priorities. Reading for fun counts, but not online. Reading online is an open-ended temptation, links to links to links. Print books keep you in the book.

Countdown...

In six weeks, I will leave the full-time workforce and no longer have to go to an office. Right this minute, that feels really good. But there are so many steps that still need to taken:
1. Sign up for Medicare Part B: two forms that need to be filled out
2. Sign up for a medigap policy and Part D  prescription coverage by December 7
3. Make sure my replacement at work will really work out (the first choice didn't at all)
4. Get used to using my to-do list again (I lost track of it the past few years)

There's more, but isn't this enough?