what's wrong with this picture?

Yes, I know.   That's what happens when one thinks that one's being efficient, on a boiling hot afternoon, when frat parties are developing in the houses round about, and when the squirrels have started to jump around with incredible energy inside my office walls (presumably the fleas have started to bite harder, given the sudden summer weather?).   For I have decided to file all my notes and paper properly (or throw them away) - yes, all - starting with the very solemn essay that I wrote when preparing for Oxford entrance on a very solemn George Eliot pronouncement: that "if art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally."    Since I have to prepare some remarks for a roundtable on Friday down at Duke on "What Can Reading Do?", it's very tempting to start there ...  But this is all going to take a very long time - even when I recklessly throw out - for example - some very unpromising looking Shakespeare teaching notes from the late 70s.   I keep getting distracted by things that it would have been very useful to know that I possess - like an inspired seven sheet set of notes on She that would have come in handy two weeks ago, if I'd known that they (a) existed (b) had been able to find them.   And that, of course, is the kind of motivation that's pushing me forwards, because at this rate, I could float right through to retirement without ever properly getting this stuff in order ...