Declutter! Focus! Do one-thing-at-a-time! Plan! Schedule!
There are thousands of books and articles on how to be organized. I’ve read them. I understand them. I don’t follow them.
I rarely keep a things-to-do list. I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda person. My process is divergent, I am a piler not a filer, not logical and I used to think there was something wrong with me. (jw)
I’m slowly drifting into slumber
‘Cause I have lost the force to fight
The noise caused by the coffee, while it was slowly boiling, pervaded her mind. She tried to concentrate on that, and only that noise, because she couldn't have beared any other though at the moment. It was days now since she couldn't sleep, or even close her eyes for about an hour and just rest. Too many things was going around her head. Too many things that were keeping her away. And so she needed the coffee, during those days more than ever. It wasn't just a pleasure anymore, drink the black and bitter beverage: it was a physical need, the only thing that could keep her on her feet.
Alex McMahory walked in her living room, settling herself on the sofa that then it seemed rather uncomfortable - slumber was diverting her tactile perceptions. She drank a sip of coffee, and the liquid got assimilated straightaway, giving her a feeling of pleasant and strong pain to the temples. She beared it and drank another sip, this time less painful. Maybe she had to lean the head on a pillow for a bit... Morpheus wouldn't have come to take her anyway, not with the caffeine circulating in her veins.
She looked to the empty seat next to her, the side where a few days before the one who gave a definitive contribute to her actual condition sat. Daniel Atlas, with his arrogant smirk. She shouldn't have beared his sight, instead she found herself thinking he was the person most similiar to her that she could ever meet in a lifetime. Arrogance was, actually, certainty on some abilities that were effectively there and, moreover, he was a stubborn perfectionist. Just like her... But he was always the one who messed everything in her life. Well, Alex was already messed on her own.
Various were the reasons why, including her colleague Dylan Rhodes, for whom she developped a non-indifferent high school crush. Seeing him everyday at work wasn't a simple thing to manage for her, to make that little crush pass. That was also why she took that decision.
Another sip, and her head pulsed roughly. Alex was keeping on going at work, at the office, but often she stayed behind the desk and talked to nobody - less than she used to, at least - and kept on thinking. She told no one about her meeting/clash with Atlas. It would have given profit to everyone, that news: to the FBI for the information she managed to obtain - about the Eye, the Horsemen, and the old and new magicians' organizations; to herself, who could obtain fame. 'Infiltrate' as J. Daniel Atlas' 'friend' would have been considered as a master stroke, a sleight of hand worth for an illusionist! But she didn't say a word, not even with her friends. Because that guy was too similiar to her. It was like betraying herseld. There it was, the egoism... It showed up in a strange was, but it was always egoism.
She was about to drink the coffee again, but she found the cup empty. It happened often: Alex was now so ravished by her own thought, that she usually forgot about what she was doing, if what she was doing was real... She was literally going mad.
I should have pulled that trigger. At first, he could escape; but when she found him sitting on her couch, she had him on a string. The gun aimed to his head, Atlas had no way out. But she didn't pulled it. She didn't arrest him. That was the moment things had changed, inside of her. No. I shouldn't. I would have never.
Alex got up from the couch and went to wash herself, to get changed.
---
She had the report in her hands. It was incredible of how a piece of paper could make you feel so strange. But to Alex, that was pratically the piece of paper that would have changed her life. All her old securities, everything she ever believed in, resided in that sheet.
She kept on looking at it, in complete wonder, as if it was magical, as if it was her redemption. She looked at it with such a depth, that she almost didn't notice she was about to bump into the desk, her desk, with all of her stuff lying on it. Pencils, white papers, charms, pictures... Everything was there, asking to be carried away with her, not to be forgotten on that desk. Someone left a box for her, on the chair - some colleague glad for her leaving, maybe. Alex began to collect her stuff and put it carefully inside the box. She felt like in one od those cheap movies, where the main female character was being fired just at the very beginning of the film, so she could start a new life. What a sad thing, she thought instead. Yes, it was sad, because that sabbatical year not only would have marked the 'end of an era'; it would have also marked her failure.
Once took everything, Alex gave one last look to her empty desk, melancholy crossing all her body. Well... Goodbye, my old friend. She teared up a little, but soon turned back to her normal state of self-control.
