The cause of my malady? Trying to find a goddamn note-taking system for my PhD that works.
It should be simple. I should read the PDF papers I have, take some notes, and write relevant information into the papers I'm currently drafting. But I've spiralled into a vortex of note-taking software and hardware.

It might sound fussy, but when the alternative is cheap paper and my legible handwriting, I want the best I can get. The Bamboo tablet did come bundled with some software that allows you to annotate a virtual note-book (Bamboo Paper - but the handwriting isn't very smooth), or write on screen and it translates it directly into text (Bamboo Scribe), to be pasted in any application. And in fact, the Mac OS allows you to do this too (Ink). But this is just a scratch-pad, and I really wish they'd let you save what you've handwritten, because Bamboo Scribe was the smoothest/neatest by far!
the software I needed.
During this research, I found out that Evernote (on Windows) allows you to use a Wacom tablet to write directly in the program. Problem solved... or is it? To my dismay, this function is not provided in the Mac version of Evernote, but a work-around using Evernote Skitch to annotate images and import them into Evernote almost works just as well.
Oh and the pain I spoke about before? That sick feeling that I've wasted a weeks worth of work just trying to figure out the best way to be productive. Add in a sore shoulder for not using a proper ergonomic set-up for the tablet (it was sitting too far to the right when it should have been centered in front of me). I'll keep you up to date and let you know if it was all worth it!