I keep getting pulled in new directions. I’ll be sitting at my desk doing whatever it is I do all day and I’ll look up and think, Wow, I’ve really got to get rid of all my old clothes and books and papers and rearrange the bedroom and maybe I should get to that tomorrow.

I’ll be standing before a dressing-room mirror, looking with horror at my profile, and think, Wow, I’ve really got to join the gym and go to the supermarket to get healthy food to bring in to lunch and maybe I should get to that tomorrow.

I’ll read something—like an article in The New Yorker fiction issue by Haruki Murakami in which he simultaneously makes his life as a novelist seem so easy and so difficult at once—and I’ll think, Wow, I have to work harder at my writing or I’ll never make it with literary fiction; I have to make more sacrifices; I should go to my writing spot and write after work… maybe tomorrow.

Then, of course, tomorrow comes and not much has changed.

Sometimes it’s easiest to focus on work at my day job and keep my real life outside the office, saving all the very many things I have to do for later, but I have a good boss and I think he’s seeing how I tend to go overboard with the wrong things. During summer hours I work Monday through Thursdays until 6:15 p.m. so I can have half-day Fridays. Last night, at 6:16, my boss pops his head into my doorway and says, What time is it?

I look at the clock and grudgingly admit that it’s 6:16, one minute after I should be leaving.

So go home, he says, get out!

He’s right. What am I doing? You’d think I’d have my priorities straight by now. Maybe I should get a better handle on things, put what should be first first, slack less, focus more, maybe I should really get to that, you know—say it with me—tomorrow.