I've been in kind of a funk lately. Not for any broad reasons I don't think, but it happens this time of year for me. I'm transitioning on projects for work, Simon just ended school, and life just feels like it's in a transition of sorts. Nothing gets me out of bed in the morning other than the desire to knock out my walk before it gets too f'ing hot (and we're still trending above normal temperatures).
What am I passionate about? It seems like writing about this sort of thing helps me, because at the very least I can look back at it and say, "Nice job, dickhead, you followed through on exactly nothing." Seriously, when I think about some period of my life, it's surprising how often I can look back at the blog posts now after almost 15 years.
In no particular order...
- Spend quality time with Simon. The kid needs it. With school over, he's constantly asking us to play with him. I need to figure out some way to make it constructive and awesome. With the Broadway season over, Diana isn't working as much, so we're not even doing our weekend Disney visits.
- Be social with friends. To my surprise, we have quite a few friends here, many of them neighbors. I'm not sure what to do with that exactly. We all have kids (or significant others), and jobs, so how do people hang out as adults. It's completely weird that I don't understand how to do this. I try to have lunch with my BFF weekly, but between the two of us we've been too busy at work and haven't done that in weeks. I only ever see one neighbor, because we work together. I think I'm doing it wrong.
- Write some code! In my winding-down project, I wrote more code than usual for my position, and I'll probably write a lot going forward because my team is mostly just me on the next project. That's usually not good for me working on my own projects. I need to get some commits in for my open source project (plenty of issues in the backlog), so I can renew my open source license for Resharper.
- Photographs some stuff. I have a beautiful kid, wife, friends, etc., and I don't bust out my camera enough. I also live next door to one of the most beautiful tourist attractions in the world. Yet all of that gear isn't getting used. Lame. I also have this new mirrorless camera (a Panasonic GF7 that is beautiful with the lens I bought a few years ago for my video camera), and it's really great in low light. That, and I have this "L" glass for my Canons. No excuses.
- Vacation like I mean it. I'm doing a quasi-staycation in July. We're gonna do a few days at Legoland and stay at their new hotel. It's not a great deal, but it's the only deal if you want to stay in a Lego-themed hotel. The rest of that week, I need to figure out some other activities. I'm pretty sure we may do a cruise in August as well. The ships are my happy place, and I don't know if I feel more relaxed anywhere else.
- Think about home improvement. We've dropped into a lot of area models lately, and we've had this itch to move somewhere else. Believe it or not, we really liked a smaller "cottage" property because it's about to be surrounded by walkable retail and such, and there's a lot of appeal in that. Awesome as that would be, I think we agree that we just haven't spent a lot of time making our house awesome. It doesn't matter that the house is new, we still have to put our mark on it. Aside from some awesome custom curtains that Diana made, and a few fans and lighting fixtures, we haven't really "decorated" the place. I think the "bird cage" is something we'll consider this fall.
- Build "something." I'm not even sure what this means. I've been thinking for some time about the fact that I have a Mac Mini, now five years old, sitting underneath my TV that I used to use as my BeyondTV DVR. It's a great little computer for emulation, and it might be fun to build an arcade cabinet from scratch and use it to power an arcade emulator or something. (Although, if I can find a powered antenna to once again pull in OTA TV down here, it might just go back to being a DVR.) An arcade cabinet is just an example. I feel like I need to learn how to use more power tools.
- Write a screenplay. I've been talking about this for at least a decade, and I'm an asshole for not following through. Seriously, a five-page screenplay, a simple short, is all I really need. Then I can go shoot it. I have the technology. Why can't I follow through on this? (Hint: I don't think anything in my head is very good.)
So there we go... let's see what I can do.