1:11 a.m. I think I can state, with total confidence, that it's not a good idea to announce in a public forum (such as this) your grand schemes and plans. Or what you plan to do tomorrow. Or the next day, or with the rest of your life.

Because if you do announce, you will renounce. Or retreat, or retract, or repent. Believe me. Do not make a handy list, or a solemn vow. You may be raising your fist in the air, as God is your witness, but it will not do you any good. You will be hungry again, probably at around 4:30 in the afternoon if memory serves.

I most certainly did not take down the tree today. I meant to, I really did. I looked at it, noticed a bit of bedragglement, and then I walked past it into my office, put it out of my mind, and happily spent the whole day -- the whole entire day -- organizing my icons.

Yes. I have very little shame. I also have 4,477 icons, or 26.9 megabytes of the little buggers. That's a whole lotta icons. There would be no point, no point in keeping them at all if I just let them rattle about messy and uncategorized. That would be wrong. So, I put the clothing in the right folders, separated the characters from the faces, sub-foldered all the animals, and made a folder of fancy folders.

Do you think that maybe -- just maybe -- accomplishment is nothing more than organized obsessions?

I certainly hope so. I have legitimate plans for these icons, which is why they should be orderly. Of course I can't tell you what that plan is because then I would be right back there at square one, announcing ahead of time, creating a false deadline, looking like a sluggard and a sloth as the days turned into weeks and the plan didn't materialize quite as quickly as I'd planned.

Believe me, I wanted to take the tree down just so I would seem -- dependable. And as the afternoon progressed and I realized I was making great headway in the icon organization, having entirely too much fun, I must admit ... I thought more than once of madly yanking everything down from the branches just to say I did.

Which is how we come, inevitably, to one of those all-important talks about instinct. Instinct! Your most important possession. That little voice. The hunch that packs a punch. If you possess a strong instinct, well, bully for you. You are probably a very capable, powerful individual.

For the rest of the population, especially those who make it a practice to do as they are told or to carefully follow orders or commandments to the letter of the law -- for those poor folks -- for people like me, instinct is a feeble, fragile quivery wavery thing. A sickly creature with a reedy voice and a thready pulse.

She only speaks in the faintest of whispers and then she'll fall silent for long stretches if criticized or challenged or mocked. Which is a shame, really. My instinct is always, always right. How could it not be?

And I want to cultivate my instinct, believe me. I want to be just like Ed Norton or Cosmo Kramer and do exactly what I want to do, cheerfully and without malice, but also without worry that I'm odd. It is my dream. When I am old, I will wear combat boots.

In the meantime, I still try to keep up appearances. Thus, the tree must come down. And I'd better go on a diet soon. You heard it here first. You'll hear it here again and again.

Tomorrow looks to be a sunny day. My instinct tells me not to make plans.