Over the past few months, my life has been packed past overflowing, leaving me to field every single productivity hack, every organizational system I know, in an a nonstop effort to make it all fit.

And while, in short, it never quite did, at countless points along the way I managed to get tantalizingly close. Each time, the universe, clearly as karmic retribution for the wrongs of my past lives, would toss in an unforeseen wrench that would completely derail me, send me back to building towards nearly-on-top-of-things, one step at a time.

I thought of that today as, after a particularly trying month, Long Tail finally seemed to be crystallizing into a real company, Cyan’s projects finally seemed to be chunking steadily ahead. And then, this very morning, I was pulled unexpectedly into a close friend’s serious personal crisis, which ate up the first half of my day, unhinged the second half, and will likely leave me scrambling the rest of the week.

As Martha Gellman once wrote, “the only aspect of our travels that is interesting to others is disaster.” In which case, if I can somehow find the spare moments to write about, this week should be surpassingly fascinating stuff.