Yesterday, I came home from brunch with a friend, printed out all 119 pages of my novel in progress, read and line-edited the whole thing, and prepared for the revisions scheduled to take place this afternoon. I researched magazines and fellowships, identified pieces to send out and cleaned my office. I made myself a to-do list for today. Not bad, huh? I figured I was on a roll.

I was wrong.

Below are just a few of the things that have distracted me from work this morning:

• My job.

• The fact that Boyfriend the stray cat has been on my porch for 45 minutes.

• The impending blizzard.

• The fact that Boyfriend the cat is sitting on my welcome mat while a blizzard impends.

• Facebook.

• Polite correspondence.

• Polite correspondence via Facebook.

• The fact that Boyfriend the cat will surely have to come indoors if he’s on my porch when the blizzard hits.

• Worries about the syllabus that will take me a half hour to complete.

• Clearly, if I keep Boyfriend the cat on the doorstep for another several hours, we’ll have no choice but to add him to this household.

• This blog.

• A mental inventory of groceries, so that we can eat during the impending blizzard.

• The sad fact that Boyfriend the cat is no longer on the porch.

It might be time for me to lock myself in my office, pull down the shades and turn off the Internet.