A contender for a prize nobody wants

If there's a prize for banging one's head against a brick wall, I'm definitely a contender today. Here I am on Writing Wednesday sitting in a conference room in the library with seven of my colleagues all busily tapping the keyboards of their laptops to make progress on their important summer writing projects while I'm frantically scrambling to find the notes I took on an important book two weeks ago.

I need those notes! Last month a journal sent me a very favorable response to an article I'd submitted, offering no stylistic suggestions at all (!) except for a request that I change the title (which I LOVE, but whatever), but they demanded that I respond to three specific scholars' work. Now I had already read two of those scholars and dismissed them as not terribly relevant to my argument, but, again, whatever: if that's what it takes to get this article published, I'll respond. I hadn't read the third scholar but quickly ordered the book through interlibrary loan, read it, and took extensive notes. 

Which I now can't find. Anywhere. I either filed the notes under a ridiculous name in a folder unrelated to my current project or else I failed to save the document at all, which would be pretty unusual for me. Obsessive organization is my middle name, so losing something makes me feel like a doddering old biddy.

I was all set to make all the necessary revisions to that article this morning until I realized that I could not locate those notes. I tried--searched through every file related to this project and many unrelated files as well--until I realized that it was hopeless. The notes are not there and I can't revise the article without them, so excuse me while I bang my head against the wall.

Finally I turned away from writing and decided to do some more mindless and soothing tasks, like fiddling around with fall syllabi, updating office hours, dates, page numbers, and other essential details. At least I'm making progress on something. Copy the new date, paste in the left-hand column; copy the new page numbers, paste in the right-hand column. Any idiot could do this job--and on a day like today, that's exactly what I feel like.