So I didn’t really have much of a blog post in mind going into this. The new project is just about to come together and kick off, and has been full of interesting-to-me technical challenges and website learnings. Beyond that I have been especially struggling with the winter SADs this year.
Things came to a head this week where everyone in the household was just cold, snippy with each other all the time, and highly emotionally fragile. It was a bit of a powder keg, and I didn’t have any reserves to deal with it beyond ordering pizza for kids, BBQ wings for me and the $Spouse, and sitting everyone down in front of the TV during dinner to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. This was an especial treat because: a) the kiddos got to have pizza from a local chain that is usually banned but that they love, and b) normally we do dinner at the table with no TV.
They had never seen Raiders before, and although Miss Eleven was skeptical of the trailer and mildly disappointed that we didn’t watch her current pick for next movie, they both loved it. It was fun for me to watch an old classic with fresh eyes, since it had been so long since we had given it a watch. I was struck by the framing and the shots, and so many classic tropes that were codified by this movie.
We need to figure out some other 80s classics to queue up, and make it a semi-regular thing, I think.
I’m not sure I’m ready to fully reveal the side project yet, but that announcement will come soon. In the meantime, I have a long afternoon of waiting for young Master Eleven to prepare for taekwondo belt grading, so I will try to get back into the free-flowing blogging groove.
Now that the job situation has calmed down, I’m in this awkward mental state of getting back to thinking about what I really want to do with myself, instead of just jumping from work crisis to work crisis. Iit’s not helped by the fact that my mood is low due to the waning daylight hours (but waxing again after today, thank goodness). It has led to a lingering dissatisfaction and a pattern I have returned to many times: what I do for my day job isn’t really what I want to spend my time on, but I don’t ever quite feel like I have enough time outside of work to spend my time on what I really want to do. I have my little projects that I grab in fits and spurts but a whole day or a series of days to just progress a project for me is what my brain tells me it really wants.
The problem is I’m not sure if it would ever pan out the way I think in my head, and also I like eating.
I’m skeptical that if I just had a week of 8 hours a day of full focus on my dream project I’d feel satisfied. Would I get bored of it? Would I just dither away my time without the structure and expectation of salaried work?
For now I guess we won’t know.