The Time Paradox

As of yesterday, I am officially receiving a salary again. I've been working for three weeks at my new job and it's nice to know I'm getting paid for that effort. It's also nice to have some established responsibilities again. The life of the househusband certainly has its perks, but it also reinforced something I've long suspected about myself: I don't do very well as my own boss. I have tons of great ideas, but I need external pressure to focus on them. Or a time crunch. The other lesson, or perhaps an extension of the same lesson: I'll take as much time to complete a project as I'm offered. If someone else sets a deadline, well, the project gets done by that deadline. On the other hand, when, as say an unemployed househusband, I find myself with theoretically infinite time, I allow myself to use all of it. You probably get the point, but I'm still going to use my dictatorial power as sole author of this blog to force a few examples on you:

Here is a list of the "projects" I've set for myself during my long hiatus from a salaried job:

• Write another book
• Revise and submit the book I did finish (while working my first full-time job, I should add)
• Build my brother's birthday present from 2008
• Create a new webpage for the B&B party
• Keep a blog (you already know how well that one turned out)
• Learn Visual Basic

The list goes on. Most of those items have been on that list since before I left my LAST job in 2006. The school year didn't help much with timing (the occasional "40 hour day" creates the opposite problem I described above), but it did offer several summers of part-time work when I couldn't say I was busy. And ALL of those items have been on the list since I left school in 2009.

So, with that in mind, here is a list of my "accomplishments" since graduation:

• Watched 2 seasons of Dexter, 4 seasons of Bones, as many episodes of CSI, NCIS, Psych, NCIS:LA, and Leverage as I could find available on-demand or on Netflix "Watch Instantly" at any given time.
• Earned roughly 7000 gamer points for achievements on my Xbox 360 (for reference: Bruce, Pennock, and Lockard are the only people on my friends list who have 7000 points at all, let alone within a 15-month period)
• Read something like a million books (including lots of WWII histories -an interest kindled after watching the full set of Band of Brothers)

Notice there's not a whole lot of overlap between the two lists. (I don't really want to think about the time-investment that second list represents). Oh, and I helped plan a wedding in there, so that counts for something, but otherwise not the set of accomplishments for which I hoped to use my downtime.

I am learning though. The solution to my "infinite time" dilemma is two-fold:
(1) Create a time shortage
Perfect example, I started a new job three weeks ago and suddenly you're getting your first blog entry in six months (and that one barely counts). Even an artificial shortage helps. Restricting my time on a personal project to specific hours forced me to actually do the work during those hours rather than telling myself I'd have time later and that, in the meantime, it was fine to seek out another secret achievement on my Batman game.
(2) Create external pressure
Part of the reason I returned to the blog instead of retiring it (as I'd been contemplating) is that my Dad asked about it which, for those of you who remember when these columns existed in email form way-back-when, is precisely why I started sharing these thoughts with others to begin with. A more successful example is The League of Extraordinary Writers. I recently assembled a few writer/critic friends into a writer's group where, among other things, we serve as motivation for each other to actually sit down and write something. I respond well to homework, and by gathering others who would expect me to contribute something on a regular basis I've made more progress on my book this summer than in the past three years combined (which is especially sad given how little progress that is BUT, thanks to the group, it IS accelerating and I'm really excited about that).

Do I have my project completion issues completely resolved now? Probably not, but I am at least working on most of these actions again. I've already begun to tackle that project list again and, at the very least, the list of "accomplishments" above certainly contains several noteworthy opportunities for review-style blog entries. Maybe I'll actually get around to writing some of them now that I don't have the time.

Minor Obstacles

There are interesting stories popping up all over my life that I've wanted to tell you all about. Bolt was just more important, I had to make sure everyone read that entry before I was willing to post any more.

No? Don't buy that one? Yeah, Bolt's not my proudest entry. (Not bad, but I've done better.)

How about this one then:

I was kidnapped by a band of thieves who needed my unique expertise to pull off a complicated caper. Our adventures together were hilarious, heart-warming, and poignant (especially the scene where we discovered what the leader was really after). Unfortunately, the President has forbidden me to speak of any of this.

No again? You're a tough audience. Tell you what, I'll put up a bunch of excuses and you can just pick your favorite:

1. I traveled to a remote mountaintop guru to discover the meaning of life. He was on vacation when I got there, so I'll have to go back some other time.
2. I've been recovering from the B&B party.
3. I was struck by lightning and began to generate a field that interfered with electronic devices, thus making it completely impossible for me to use a computer to post my blog. On the other hand, it did give me the power to thwart a villanous conspiracy of robots. So that's good.
4. I took a vow of digital silence. I break it now only because the need is so dire.
5. My grammar was stolen from me by a mad-scientist named Frank. I tried to write for help, but the result was unreadable and deeply embarassing. I had to retrieve my grammar on my own.
6. I caught a bad computer virus and could only speak in binary for a long time. I had to quarantine myself from my computer so as not to get it sick, too.
7. I was playing a video game and reached a two month long cut-scene that I couldn't pause. I spent the rest of the time since then catching up on sleep.
8. I went on tour with Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.
9. My evil twin kidnapped me and took my place. He spent the time applying to jobs, helping plan my wedding, and playing video games. He occasionally thought about all the blog entries I couldn't write in captivity and then laughed maniacally.
10. There was an accounting error and the finger company thought I had missed several payments. They repossessed both hands until I was able to show them their mistake. They returned the hands (obviously) but never apologized.
11. I slipped on a temporal distortion getting out of the shower one morning and spent twelve weeks stuck in 1937.
12. There was an accident involving superglue.
13. The authorities finally caught up with me and I had to serve my time for the incident in Morocco. It's probably a good thing they never connected me to the Paducah thing or you'd never get your blog entries back.

There, what do you think? Let me know if you need any more. In the meantime, I think I'll stop writing excuses and start writing blog entries again (well, once I've dealt with this secret alien invasion).

Important Announcement

My girlfriend has joined the ranks of the blogger. Welcome, Sarah!