Why my brain is full

In the process of packing up my office—apparently we’re moving tomorrow, although there is still time for that to be changed (!)—I have discovered why I always feel as if my brain is full.

The last bits of packing up involved the piles of stuff on my desks, which had been filed according to the sedimentary system, in order from the late Ordovician to the more contemporaneous Quaternary period.

In short, these are my “projects in progress” (yes, even the Ordovician ones!), either ongoing tasks or things of the I-won’t-file-that-properly-because-I’ve-got-to-get-back-to-it kind.

Now I have long been aware that one of the complications of academic life is that there are so many different aspects of our work: teaching (various subjects), research (various projects), working with the profession (various writing tasks and presentations), and administration (various … variouses).

But it was only when I refiled my fossil record topic by topic, that I discovered the full scope of the problem: I ended up with nearly 30 piles, of which 15 or so are supposed to be in my head-space.

To quote a Larson “Far Side” card I once saw:

“May I be excused? My brain is full.”