Getting caught up with org-mode...

A not-so-obvious aspect of working with org-mode to keep track of things such as translation deadlines, credit card payment due dates, dates on which various subscriptions renew, and so on, is acknowledging the occurrence of such events. This is important both for one-time events that are scheduled or for which there is a deadline (such as a document translation), as well as for recurring events (such as a credit card payment, which occurs every month).

Now throw in various things that are of lower urgency, but still things you want to have pop up on the radar, such as writing a letter to a kid whose village or school you're supporting. If you fail to properly take the time to address all of these items that show up in the so-called "agenda" view, said view becomes excessively cluttered with overdue reminders, to the point where the important stuff starts to become hard to see, and eventually, you end up missing a deadline that costs you, in one way or another.

So, over the past few days, I've been getting mediaeval on various overdue items, bringing important ones up to date and outright deleting items whose performance or lack thereof isn't going to make a whole lot of difference to anyone.

I cleared the translation plate way earlier in the day, waking up at 2 am this morning and eventually deciding to get up and "turn to" an outstanding job after two hours of tossing and turning, after which I went back to sleep. A side-effect of my industry is that now, my agenda now is very bare-bones, reminding me that Feht's anniversary is tomorrow, and that my sister-in-law's birthday is Friday.

And so it goes...