My head hurts. Today marks the first time in a long time that I’ve had a migraine with visual aura. Just my luck, I suppose—another in a long line of gifts from my parents. There isn’t a lot you can do in this situation to alleviate the pain other than sleep. I guess there’s probably some medication, or even some spiritual meditation that I could do, but I’m a bit too ignorant for those. I’m also fairly anti-medication unless you absolutely need it. So, what do I choose to do instead? Write. Yup, that’s correct. I choose to write when my head feels like I’ve been listening to loud music all day. Though, I suppose I can’t blame it all on my parents. They say that stress can cause all sorts of problems like migraines and headaches. Well that’s a relief; perhaps I’m not actually defective. If you just figured out via implication that I’m under a bit of stress, then two points for you.

Lesson one (learned today of course): Stay away from phantom tasks. What is that you say? It’s a task that doesn’t have a clear goal or adversary. It’s a problem that doesn’t necessarily exist, and it’s partially your responsibility to determine its existence. Now this by itself is not hard. If you have holes in your screen door, there’s a pretty good chance that a squirrel is chewing through it. All it takes is a bit of observation. A phantom, on the other hand, is something that cannot be directly reproduced or observed. It’s something that happens randomly and out of your control. How then, do you find a phantom? When I figure this out, I’m sure I’ll make a few million.

Lesson two: When investigating aforementioned phantoms, other tasks have a tendency to pile up. No, the world does not stop revolving when you are observing a particular set of stars. Unfortunately, some people still try to see them after they’ve set beyond the horizon. Smarter people invent satellites and form viewing partnerships with others around the world.

Lesson three: You made the same amount of money today as you did yesterday. You say you’re bored? Fine, then pick up another project on the side. That project ends? Then it’s time to pick up another one. All of the sudden, the schedules get tight. And wham, right out of nowhere, that first project comes back and says that you have three days to do two months of work.

So, today I learned that combining lessons one through three could be correlated with causing migraines. I feel like someone who just ran way faster than his comfortable pace, and now that he’s trying to slow down he’s finding that it’s not so easy to lower his heart rate without slowing down considerably or completely stopping for a while. I think my upcoming schedule requires a few tweaks… perhaps a big V.