Ah, I've finally made it out of the house. I've been cooped up there all week for one reason or another. Until yesterday, I hadn't even been outside of the house other than to get packages of of the covered porch - a crime, considering the weather. But today, today is a good day.
Clients seem appeased, and work - although steady and challenging - is not frantic and stress-inducing like it often has the capacity to be. Also, we've got new projects and new people coming in, which is exciting. I'm particularly pleased with a little side project I've been coding for use at work - a Drupal module that replaces and vastly improves on Campfire's chat capabilities.
I've been able today to run a couple of errands, too. I got a note into Abby's school to let her stay for her Girl Scout meeting this afternoon, and also payment for her class photo. Currently, I'm finishing lunch at Stadium Grille, which I've missed since I stopped taking Abby to Kindergarten every other day. I'm really jazzed about not having to eat another Hot Pocket. My burger was phenomenal. As they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and the same can be true for food that you like.
Tonight we're going to try to get the scooter running with a new spark plug. I really hope that's all it needs. Soon then I'll be puttering around Chester Springs more often, just to have an excuse to ride the scooter. After that, Dad is going to sit with the kids while Berta and I got out for dinner and maybe a movie. We did go out on Berta's birthday, but these dates without kids are infrequent enough to still be notable.
And the weather today... It's amazing. The trees are all starting to get that green haze on them, and the temperature is just on the hot side of Spring. It's nice.
I don't know what plans the rest of the weekend holds, but I hope there's room to appreciate it and fill it with activity like today.
It's frequent over the last few years that between early November and mid-January I enter a kind of soul-numbing melancholy. I'd managed to avoid it last year with the new job, and I was doing so well this year, not really thinking too much about it, but I think it's sneaking up on me. I can kind of feel its approach.
Interestingly, I think that it's nothing to do with the holidays, which maybe it used to be. And it doesn't have anything to do with my birthday, which I will once again not be celebrating on the actual day. I guess it's that I'm bothered by work stuff more these days, which is shocking considering what an influence it was last year to staying out of the funk. Now it's most of the cause. If I think about it too much, I just want to crawl into a hole somewhere.
It's a weird mix of feeling underutilized while also feeling ineffectual; overburdened while simultaneously not doing much. For things that I'm supposed to be expert at I frequently feel like that expertise is being eschewed. Things that I've volunteered to learn more about - things I don't already know much about - to help out in areas that we're weak seem to be things that I'm already expected to know, and when I don't, I feel worthless and like I'm not doing my job well.
I'm missing opportunities to work on things that might have a finite scope because I have other work that is consuming me - things I know I'm not great at, don't like to do, and have no end that I can see. It might be nice to start, finish, and be praised for something to have some simple success. My schedule seems to not allow this, I guess. Or I just suck too much to actually be given tasks like that.
I keep wondering if I'm telling myself that I am good at this, but really I'm mediocre. Or worse than mediocre. I'm questioning a year's worth of thinking that I've ever been good at this. Again.
I wonder if there's anything else I can avoid screwing up. It's not fun feeling like this and I hope it passes soon.
I'm writing this post from the Septa R5 into Philadelphia, on my way to Suburban Station and a day of work at a temporary office across the street from Liberty Place. That may be one breath of a sentence, but it's appropriate for the month I'm having.
Deadlines for work have gotten... interesting. And in the midst of it all, I have meetings with big clients for the rest of the week. Next week I give a presentation on PHP frameworks, specifically CodeIgniter, which is fun since I haven't used it since maybe June, coincidentally for the client that I'm meeting in the city today. At some point before this major deadline I need to take some time out to watch Riley, since Nana is going on vacation with mom.
Has anyone mentioned the Habari 0.3 release? Any. Day. Now. Just a metter of saying, at this point, "no more", and putting it out. But I don't have the time to do it myself, and my attempts to get others focuses on it have fizzled so far. But I'm (perhaps stupidly) still optimistic for this month.
There's a blogger meetup this weekend, which I'd really like to attend, since I feel like I haven't seen those folks in a dog's age. Should I even look forward to November?
November brings Riley's third birthday, Thanksgiving (again - what to do this year?) and the usual prep for Christmas that takes a month's advance planning.
It's just a bit frustrating that I've set myself some blogging goals for the month, as you might have noticed. With all what else to do, you'd even think I'd have more to write about, but the reality is infuriatingly the opposite. So I've got to find/do things to blog about and have time to blog them. Yes, a very challenging month indeed.
So these little escapes while sardine-packed onto the train could be my most personally productive moments. Thank goodness blogging from my phone is possible. (Yes, this whole post typed on the chicklet keypad.) Aye de mi.
You know how I'm always saying that I have so many back-burner projects that I don't have time for? And how I wish I had a little time here or there to work on any one of them to the point that they could surface to at least see if they would sink or float?
Berta recently had her yearly review at work, and she's going to be making a little more money. Not a whole lot, but enough to keep pace with inflation and eating out at restaurants. I jokingly asked her if I could quit my job, and of course she told me she wasn't making that much more. "Maybe we should play the lottery," she says. Well, the Lottery idea never really worked well in the past, but I have been toying with the possibility of quitting my job anyway.
Don't get me wrong- I don't dislike my job. But you must admit if you are a working person that your job probably gets in the way of a ton of productive things that you would rather be doing. I'm not talking about "Getting a tan" or "Watching BayWatch re-runs". I'm talking about honest-to-goodness productive, well, "work".
Here are just a handful of projects I'd complete if I wasn't working 8-16 hours a day:
I wonder what the time commitment would be to finish all of them, defining "finished" as a state where I was happy enough with them to the point of not having to involve myself obsessively with them daily. Would that ever happen? Is it likely that I would be "satisfied" with, for example, Habari to the point where I could take a regular job again and let Habari return to the background?
I know of some stories of people who just had enough of the daily grind and quit to make their own way and become successful at their new endeavors. I know plenty of people who would go on retreats to Louisiana to help with disaster recovery. I know some people who did just that - quit their jobs to go help. I don't think that's for me, but I bet that with a change of lifestyle as significant as quitting work on purpose, I might reconsider that position.
Where would the money come from? I guess that's the primary concern. If I could work out how not to work for the amount of time it would take to finish all of these things, would I? Getting back into the work force would be another concern.
I'd like to say that this is just a passing idea. But I had that discussion with Berta a couple of days ago. I think that my mind will spend a few cycles every day thinking about it until it figures out a way to pull it off - if that's even possible - and then it'll work out how to sell the idea to the stakeholders.
What would you do? If you could take a year off of paid work to do something else productive, what would you do?
In the Standard Hotel lobby, behind the reception area, there is a large glass enclosure. Inside the enclosure, hanging from the ceiling, is a makeshift claw apparatus. This claw is not unlike the claw you might find in a midway game to pick up stuffed creatures to deposit in a chute as a prize.
Like the midway game, this claw enclosure is filled with stuffed white teddy bears. Also like the midway games, there is a single special prize that everyone attempts to grab, but nobody ever seems to accomplish, leading to much profit for the midway operator.
In the case of this claw machine, the special prize is a live girl in her underwear.
No, I was not able to get a picture of the girl in the case. The guy at the counter frowned upon that. But I did try, for which I think points should be awarded.
Instead, I surreptitiously took a couple of photos of the tank during the day using my camera phone If you look closely, you can see the claw and perhaps the heads of a couple of bears poking their noses up to the glass. Sorry, no half-nude girls.
But if that sort of thing floats your boat, the Standard Hotel has your number.
I have more to write about the Standard, including a much better photo of something that I think epitomizes the entire establishment, both of the ambiance of the place and of the quality. But I will expound later, since I am now completely exhausted.