Was greeted this morning by a desk several inches deep (who me? exaggerate?) in stuff: work orders, revisions of data analyses, calendars of employee furlough days, payroll, and so forth.

My M.O.? Triage.

Anything life-threateningly urgent, do it upon arrival. Nothing like that today, so I went on to the next category.

The trivial. It can be tossed off in a trice, I've done it so often. Completed and filed.

The ones appropriate for someone else on my team. Copied, faxed or emailed to them, with notations of suggested actions.

The long term ones set to the farthest left margin of my desk.

The gnarly ones, the ones requiring thought and horse-trading and negotiation and fancy footwork, just to the left of this keyboard. I read them through, made a few notes on each, and left them there for the afternoon after they've had a chance to simmer in the back of the brain.

Maybe a miracle will occur and after lunch the gnarly pile will have evaporated. And what is the likelihood of that?

Still, though, now that organization has been imposed on the chaos, it feels much more manageable and I can begin to work on the more urgent ones. The hardest thing about work, I think, is when it comes at me so fast I don't have time to triage it or even note it down before the next one assaults me. Then I feel overwhelmed.

But today is okay, though it's been a long day. I'll be glad to go home and put my feet up and disengage for a bit.

The world is too much with us, late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers....

Every now and then Wordsworth's words are just right for the day.