Cart had a million things to do and time was short. He couldn’t even bring himself to make a list because he would either crumble with fear at the length or be disappointed at his lack of coping skills should the list reveal that he really didn’t have as many things to do as he felt.

Numbers aside, the pressure was immense. He told himself that he worked better under pressure, but that might have been a lie.

It was a lie.

There were three basic lies that he told himself with bold regularity. He knew they were lies, but he had convinced himself there was a stink of truth about them.

The first was that he worked better under pressure. The second was that he was getting enough exercise and fiber to remain healthy so it was ok to keep buying chips. The third was that despite multiple declarations of fact and clarity, he believed with his soul that Nell Porterand really did like him in the 6th grade. There we other lies of course, but these seemed to surface most frequently.

He looked at the clock and gasped. The clock kept moving, yet his list was not getting any shorter.

He turned on the TV – oh look! Fishing in the Outer Banks.

Lie number 4, he was not a procrastinator, he was instead thinking things through before jumping into them. He would be more efficient that way. The Outer Banks looked lovely. He wondered what it might take to get there.

Lie number 5: he was not easily distracted, rather he was…