-{ redgeek.net }-

Inundated, yet again. For the last several months at work, we’ve had significant deliverables due at the end of each month for one of our several Big Fish clients. So far we’ve been doing well, making each drop. According to our company’s standards, as well as the feedback w from Big Fish, we’ve been performing extremely well. Nimble, responsive, performant, all the things that a start-up company should be. We’re playing our cards right.

Well, from the outside that is. From the inside, we’re so balls-out on development we have zero time scheduled for maintenance and customer support. Which means, of course, extended hours for everyone. I’m not terribly happy about it, and I have to limit OT hours due to my other obligations, but everyone’s really excited about all the potential floating around. It’s good to see that attitude, but I learned years ago, back in the era of the fabled dot-com, the extended hours don’t just mean less time at home, they mean you also enjoy your off time less. You’re just drained, a zombie. I do not wish to repeat this.

I recall one night, after having worked extended hours all week and through the weekend, delirious with sleep deprivation, curling underneath my desk through the wee hours, waiting for the burrito shop to open across the street so I could get breakfast, and becoming entirely enthralled with my CD-ROM tray. If you pushed the little button, it opened. And if you pushed it again, it closed! By itself! I can’t count the number of times I pushed that button before I burst into a solid fifteen minutes of gleeful laughter.

I never want to reach that point in my life again. I had put on twenty pounds (which I’ve subsequently lost, and more) from poor eating, sleeping, and exercise habits. In no way do I think that this company, which I’ve been with for several years, will put me in that position, nor do I believe I’ll allow myself, but I do feel shadows of that familiar fatigue in my body now.

Then again, it could just be the flu shot.

Current Big Obligations:

• Work
• Martial Arts, classes and outside training
• Martial Arts, teaching and assisting
• Photography
• Writing, blog
• Writing, novel #2
• Japanese class
• Coding, Hot Spot Defense Kit program
• Coding, PowerPC disassembly library
• Coding, Mach-O file parsing library

As I had mentioned previously, although the post got lost in the crash, I’m completely overcommitted. I won’t analyze why I do this (hah! you’re thinking) but I will say that I have to scale back. I can’t ever see myself cutting out the 10 to 20 hours of martial arts per week, as it’s my physical, mental, and spiritual anchor. Nor will I drop my Japanese class, since it’s entwined with my training and preparation for future travels. And if martial arts provide my ground, the photography and writing provide my release, so it would be foolish to abandon either. So I’m left with coding. I’m significantly into the HSDK project, and so I will attempt to reach some form of “releasable” and call it a day. Sadly, I will have to bow out of the two remaining code projects.

Beyond cutting obligations, there is something … else. I believe I want to live alone again. My roommate and his fiance are great, I could heap piles of extolation upon them, but the simple fact is, the years I lived alone the happiest I’ve been at home. (Of course I’m not home all that much, so it seems slightly odd for me to say. Beyond that, however, I’d like to correct a tone I seem to have set right thus far: I’m extremely happy and doing very well. There’s just something alienating about living with an engaged couple. It’s like you’re always visiting.)

I’ve been feeling these rumblings of potential upheaval for quite a while, deeper than I’ve felt before, below the Gantt charts and time tables. I’ve been setting them aside, acknowledging them but not becoming driven by them, waiting to see if they’re representation of the Real Deal or some mild discontent. They’re still growing, and of course there’s some things I can’t remedy immediately, as I _do_ have a mortgage, and need to wait at least nine more months to sell, but I do need to scale back. Perhaps sell some things, clean out the closets, re-prioritize.

I feel that without deeper devotion, all my arts will turn mediocre, and that’s not something I’m willing to let happen.