Not getting things done

This morning I caught myself thinking I had not got a lot of things done so far in 2013.    Brought on by starting teaching in a week, which needs some preparation of course. 

This year I've sent off the final paper of a paper that has now appeared online.   And played a significant role (not the major one but still) in submitting a big grant that would help secure the future of the research group.  

That big grant went in on Tuesday... 5 days later I'm thinking how little I've done. 

Oh and by the way I work half time (well, I'm paid half time.)  

And of course I've done quite a number of other little things too.

All of this sounds like boasting but honestly it's not.  I've had a few days of my pointer being at 0, i.e. being happy and not feeling Depressed (big D).  In those days I didn't get a lot done (really) and found that I didn't even feel guilty about it. This was a rather disconcerting feeling.  

I'm saying that if I am not getting things done well my mind likes to notice that and make me feel guilty about it.  I suspect this negative mindset is linked to Depression, of course without any evidence at all.  

So now I'm sitting in a coffee shop blogging instead of getting work done.  And yes it is Sunday morning, and it seems to me like I should be working.   

p.s. Ok there was one bit of boasting in this post. The link to my 2013 paper was boasting. More than the content of this paper, I have been feeling very proud of having published two papers in this journal 20 years apart (this is the other one).  Proud because the journal JAIR was from day one  - 20 years ago remember -not only gold standard open access but free to readers AND authors.  At the time our first paper was published access was by anonymous ftp: a few weeks later they set up a Gopher server, mentioning that this would also allow you WWW access!