Sally, Colin and Lisa's four nephews came over yesterday and are staying until tomorrow. they're nice kids but make life a little chaotic.

They've gone to the tutankamon exhibition in the milenium dome today, so I'm back to work for the first time since before Christmas.

The first day back leaves me picking up the pieces and trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing at work. I quickly ran out a list of things to do and it looks long and complicated. when comparing the list to how long I've got to get back up and running, things get more tricky... I'm off to film in Milton Keynes on Friday, so will have to spend some of thursday preparing, I've got two deadlines (for Digital Video magazine) for Friday and on Monday, George goes into hospital, so I can write off the rest of the next week.

In the meantime, the todo list gets longer as it occurs to me that the long shadow of the Jan 31st tax deadline is looming. In addition, you can't have a break from work without returning with a list of new ideas and the New Year is a time for stepping back and taking a longer term view of how you're going to focus.

When the first few weeks of the new year are a crazy, unpredictable mess, it can be a little frustrating to your new year plans.... still, hopefully if I can get some of my future plans down on (digital) paper before they vanish into the turmoil of the Now, maybe I've got a chance...

That leaves me spending a valuable day doing things that aren't urgent and leaving the urgent things like my deadlines to become more so...

Books
Having decided that instead of working on documentaries in a strict order, and being constantly frustrated when things stall which they frequently do for a thousand reasons, I'm going to start on the research phase of several - get things moving on finding interviewees - and then move each project forward as and when I can.

To this end, I've ordered a very diverse collection of books from Amazon...