Hectic life - depressing life?

In your 50s, the typical "Americana" picture is of a greying, somewhat overweight man that is the boss in the corner office. Hmmm.

Wow, I'm a cliché! :) Other than that my corner office is a cubicle. - See a photo.

However, I don't feel like that old guy. In the past few months I've:

• Learned Mac Cocoa programming;
• Learned iPhone/iPad programming;
• Introduced myself to the Flickr API;
• Introduced myself to the Amazon Web Services API;
• Updated and fixed bugs in my quantum programming language;
• Come to love the effectiveness of texting to communicate;
• Procrastinated heavily regarding my PhD comprehensive exam;
• Fixed various proofs in my paper on Inverse Categories;
• Worked;
• Played;
• Loved.

The most significant thing for me over the past few months, though, is starting to apply the "Getting Things Done" philosophy from David Allen. At the moment, I'm using a spreadsheet on a USB thumb drive with a variety of tabs in in. One for projects, another for the next actions, another for project details, one for roles and one for delegated items. If you've ever read GTD, you'll see that is primarily the "horizontal axes" of the system. I have not yet been taking the time to do that vertical axes, the goals, principles, vision of my life.

Why, you (probably don't) ask?

Well, at the moment, it is because I have this exam staring at me 3 and 1/2 months from now. If I can finish that, that feels like a significant milestone and then I can take some time to re-asses, look at goals and so forth.

Then again, what is the real story....

The real story is... most likely I don't write those things down as I believe they would force me to consider what I am doing day to day and I would then have to make some changes. Changes are tough, not fun and a lot of work.

So, bringing this back to the title - "Hectic life - depressing life?". I don't believe that for a second. I may be a human being, but I really seem to be happiest when I'm a human doing. The small trick in that is - I have to be doing the right things. The right things for me. When I avoid looking at goals, vision, purpose, I start getting this vague feeling I am not doing the right things. For example - was learning all this Mac and iPhone programming the right thing when I have a comprehensive exam around the corner and I'm not fully prepared for it.

We'll see.