I need a holiday! (by alaric)
This year, I've been alternating between bleak depression and enthusiastic elation.
Luckily, it's easy to see a pattern - the elation is when I let myself get distracted by interesting things; the depression is when I have to tear my attention back to what needs to be done rather than what I feel like doing!
It's been a funny year. On the one hand we've moved into a much larger house, with much better facilities, that's warmer and easier to keep clean and tidy. My work is great, and I've managed to catch up on some things that have been hanging over me for years - tax paperwork, terminating my limited company (that had become nothing more than a thorn in my side since I stopped freelancing), simplifying and upgrading my server setup, tidying up my home directory and organising my life. On the other hand, I've been so busy that the new home has mainly been a place to eat and sleep rather than something I've had much chance to enjoy, and I'm behind on the (small, reasonable) list of projects I wanted to do this year - with no year left to do them; I've so far spent only a handful of days on my own projects in the entire year.
I spent a whole day sorting out my workshop on my birthday in April, and ended that day with a few little things to finish off - which are still waiting for me. I've not finished the ring casting, which should only take a couple more days, nor rebuilt my furnace, which should take a few days more.
I've done a bit better on computer-based projects as I can do them wherever I have my laptop; I've done some work on my fiction project, and made progress on my organisational infrastructure to convert a huge pile of "things that need investigating to even begin to decide what needs doing about them" into a tractable TODO list, and done some writing for the ARGON project web site.
But, with my ability to concentrate on what I'm supposed to be doing rapidly waning, it's clear that I need some time off. So, I've booked the week before Christmas off of work, and I hope to:
Do what I can to fix the roof in the workshop.
- It leaks. This will be hard to fix properly, as it'll require spending lots of money on materials; and possibly can't be done until there's some warmer, drier, weather to dry the decking out. But I'll see if I can improve on the current bodge somewhat, at least to give the decking a chance to dry properly without regular re-soakings.
- There's great big gaps in the eaves, all round the walls, varying from a centimetre up to about twenty centimetres, through which an icy wind blows. All the warm air from the heater disappears, and ivy creeps in. I need to seal them up (minus a controllable air vent to let out humid air and fumes from welding - perhaps an air vent plus an extractor fan with a fume hood would be the way to go in the long run). I plan to saw some strips of wood to length so they can go between the rafters, nail them in place, and use judicious amounts of sealant to keep the tenacious ivy at bay and to account for my general inability to cut wood to exact lengths properly.
Run Ethernet to the workshop so I have an Internet connection there. This will involve spending some money on outdoor-suitable conduit and fittings, and trunking for the interior runs, then drilling lots of holes in walls and running cables through and sealing the gaps. But the result will be that I can actually do computer work at a desk with a comfy chair, rather than hunched over a laptop on the sofa with children tugging at me.
Start building the computer infrastructure in the workshop. I'm looking at a battery-backed low-voltage power system feeding a Raspberry Pi (which I already have, waiting - Sarah got me one for my birthday), bristling with sensors. Because sensors are fun.
If the weather and time permit, work on my ring casting and the furnace, although that somewhat requires dry weather. We'll see.
Chill out, play computer games, write fiction and ARGON prose.
Order the bits to build a chord keyer - I doubt I'll have time to build it by the time they arrive in the post, so I'm saving that for a project I can do at Bristol Hackspace in the new year.
But I need to take care that next year isn't like this one. Taking on so many responsibilities that I struggle to maintain my productivity means I get less stuff done, not more, and makes it hard to prioritise my effort sensibly. I'm going to book three weekend days each month, in advance, for my projects or simple relaxation, rather than just thinking I'll do them "when I get a free day" only to find that all of my weekends are booked up months in advance. I'll be open to rearranging them in order to fit around the days when Sarah or the children need me, or we're visiting people for events - most of the time, it doesn't matter what actual day I do things on. Sometimes this will involve getting a whole weekend, and then just a single day at the other end of a month; that's fine, just as long as it lets me keep making progress on my projects, and giving me a chance to unwind from the stresses of constantly doing what I must do, rather than what I want to do.
Alaric, Building Maintenance, Computing, Electronics, Metalworking, Writing | alaric | 
Tue 4th Dec 2012 10:34 pm
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By Ntona Manou, Wed 26th Dec 2012 @ 7:14 am
Hi Alaric,
Something reminded me of you today and I looked you up 🙂
I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Take care