What I Should Be Doing vs. What I Am Doing

Classes will start at the university next week.
I am teaching 3 courses Winter term.
So- there is a lot of stuff I need to do between now and then.
For example:
- Finish up the syllabi for 2 of the 3 classes
- Read through a stack of articles and book chapters on the "to possibly include" list
- photocopy a grip of articles and chapters
- take those photocopies and then scan them so they are electronic files I can put on line so students can read them
- set up the on-line course pages where students can access the articles
- watch documentaries I think will have clips that will be great for class

Mind you each of the items listed above require a lot of steps and time and energy. I am a professional, I teach all the time, and in some ways I am much more prepared than usual at this point. I say that to explain this isn't a mission impossible or anything, just a mission that I need to get focused on today and the next few days.

BUT, all these other things come up and distract me from the previously mentioned mission. So here is the list of things I've been doing this past week instead, this list is so much longer I think I will divide it into a couple of subtopics!

CLEANING: My bedroom and office needed cleaning: This task alone included
- rearranging furniture
- doing laundry
- vacuuming (also taking apart the vaacuum so it would work better)
- reorganizing my bookshelves
- cleaning out boxes of old stuff in my closet
- making my bed and of course changing the sheets and pillow cases which i hadn't bothered to do the many other recent times i made my bed, but felt was imperative under procrastination circumstances
- my walls looked bare after moving my shelves around, so I had to put up pictures, which required looking through pictures, finding frames, etc...
- a week ago, I even went through all of my dresser drawers and cleaned them out
- the living room needed tidying up
- I went through several piles of old papers and mail which means I had to do the next two items
- shredding papers
- recycling
- I even started cleaning off my desk! (which is the most related to the work I had to do, hence the thing I started on towards the end)

TV VIEWING and RECREATION
- finishing the DVD's for the last season of "24"
- starting a new series on DVD called "4400", luckily there are only 3 seasons on DVD and they only have about 12 episodes each. I only have the last two episodes for season 3 left- but netflix hasn't sent them yet
- working on an IQ test with my kitten (Contrary to our previous beliefs, he is actually above average, we were however ready for the worst)
- doing astrological charts on-line for friends of friends
- meetings with friends that aren't "necessary" but since it is break and classes are about to start I won't have time to do it later

All this proves a theory that I have contemplated for many years-
The need to finish work related to school is the best motivator to get everything else on your to do list that is unrelated to that schoolwork done. On top of that it makes all that other work even more fun and interesting!

Signed,
Yours truly sitting in a much cleaner and organized space, trying to decide what to do next other than continuing to plan for classes