Every so often a whiff of cigarette smoke will breeze in through my window from the soldiers that live in the huts next door. I am so very glad I quit. How did I live with that stink? Worse- here's an embarrassing thought- how did Sam?

Here's a happier thought: Cthulhu sighting in Afghanistan.

I've begun organizing: poking through folders on my laptop, making detailed lists, ordering everything, clearing out old files. I am edging into Getting Ready For Change mode, and I can feel the difference.

Last night I made tea and scrupulously organized the collection of recipes on my hard drive. Despite my habit of only ever using any recipe as inspiration, they are tidied into polite, easy- to- sort- through folders, because I expect to be cooking very, very soon. I do think I'll need to actually follow the directions to make a galette- oh, SmittenKitchen, you're killing me- but really, only for the pastry bits.

I've started clearing out all my old work files, too, which is both distressing and liberating. My professional habit is to store everything in a rigorously organized file system, so I've a lot to get through, but it's pretty exciting to free up that space and to imagine filling it with something a little more interesting than daily status reports.

I'm also looking at how to re- structure this website- to change things from a semi- daily status shout- out to friends and family while I've been living in a war zone  into a way to document this transition from the corporate world into a smaller, more personal life. That's one hell of a switcheroo, and provides me with long stretches of listmaking and ideacharting, two of my favorite ideas- like daydreaming that I can read later.

Then there are all the impractical lists, the lists of things I want to do and in which order I'll do them, and that's just mindless self- indulgence. Those lists go something like this: