Just do it.

Man, oh, man. It may be spring, but there is no break. I might be physically located in northern Illinois for a week, but my heart, soul and energy will be given to a little publication in central Missouri. I plan on putting in 3-4 hours a day of work at home to get everything done - my shells reporting, 5 ideas, my ag/energy law impact story - and that's just for this class. I have two exams next week, so I have a feeling I'll really only be able to do a lot of Missourian work on Monday and Thursday afternoon and that's just not enough to be where I need to be. For me, whether I survive the next week or am crushed under it all depends on how well I plan. I've always been moderately annoyed by my mother's to-do lists, now I'm finding that I'm hardly a functional human being without one that's twice as detailed as hers.

I used to be like Rebecca, stressing out about everything. And I used to be more productive. Last year, it took 1/3 of a reporting semester and a series of panic attacks to drive me over the edge and realize that that type of stress was making me miserable and driving me to the grave. In the past year, I've had to radically readjust my attitude and fight for sanity. I'm a lot happier now, but I just don't feel like I'm getting enough work done (but at the same time I know I am). I'm hoping that a new commitment to keeping an updated, organized, thorough will be a way to help me recover my productivity while keeping my sanity.

My agriculture and energy story is halfway there, sort of. Everytime I've talked to my editor, the focus changes just enough to make me feel like I'm back at square one. I want to kick this gorilla out of the room. I need to finish building the cage (frame) around him, explain his presence (put him in context) and send him out into the real world (get him published)! After yesterday's meeting, I think we planned the best framework for this story. It's just time to do it. I'm spending my morning at work drafting an intense, prioritized to-do list.

Then there's shells. I spent last night working on that stuff. I'm realizing I really love the brainstorming and planning of projects like these but follow through hasn't always been my strong suit. I was organizing our scattered, multicolored web of potential ideas into a neat little diagram and it hit me: I could do this. After high school, I vowed I never wanted to be an editor. But just maybe, down the road, if I had the chance to plan projects without having to execute them, I could do it. I could be an editor. And I'd enjoy it. But first, I must work on getting things done.