I’m woefully missing the catharsis here. One of the things about taking your passion and making it your day job is that sometimes you still need a break from your passion when you do it enough: which means that I need more opportunities away from a keyboard than I’d like to admit that I do. Might be time to pick up another hobby-or at least hit the gym more often. It’s not like we didn’t move into this building partially because there was one on the first floor, free to residents. Working from home should give me plenty of time to drop in for a half-hour workout, right? Right?

In the time since I’ve started working full time at Lifehacker, I’ve written more than I thought I ever would, researched more than I ever thought I would, read more horrible stories and DIY projects gone horribly wrong than I ever thought I would, and waded through more self-entitled commenters and attention-hungry PR reps than I ever thought I would. And for the most part, I love it – all of it. I may not love getting up as early as I do to make it all happen, but I wouldn’t trade it in to go back to a day job, commute to a cubicle, and slave away at work that I don’t find half as interesting.

To that end though, it’s been an emotional rollercoaster that I totally thought I was ready for – maybe with a few known weaknesses, but I thought I had shored up my mental and emotional defenses, knew where my weak points were, but this has been more challenging than I anticipated. There’s a reason I posted this video to Gears and Widgets, and if I said I didn’t have at least a moment a day where I wish I could force at least one person to watch it, I’d be lying. I know eventually I’ll get used to it or ignore it, and honestly I think that thicker skin is coming in, but I wish it didn’t take so long, or suck so much.

So in the past few weeks, I inherited an iPad for my ailing mother, who has a second-gen iPod Touch that’s just too small for the emailing and blogging that she’s trying to do with it. Oddly enough, using it for a few weeks while I got it ready to give to her made me want one pretty badly: not that it fills any essential need in my life–it really doesn’t–but boy is it a handy tool to have around.

I also finally upgraded my old OG Motorola Droid for a shiny new Droid Bionic – I’ve been sitting on an eligable upgrade for months now, and I’ve been waiting for the Bionic since CES in January, when the phone was the star of the show. The reviews have been largely positive, and while people note that Samsung is likely bringing a new phone to Verizon Wireless in October or November (the Galaxy Nexus or Nexus Prime, depending on who you’re listening to, and it’ll be the first phone to run Android 2.4 “Ice Cream Sandwich,”) I figured if I keep waiting and clinging to whatever the “next best thing” will be, I’ll always find myself waiting for the “next best thing.” All things considered, I love this thing – it didn’t take me too long to configure, and really appreciate the extra speed.

At the risk of sounding like I’ve been buying too many toys lately (which I probably have,) I also picked up a Sony Nex-5N – my first camera that’s not on a phone since my old 5MP Pentax (which I donated before I moved last because it was on its last legs anyway) and the first one I’ve had with interchangeable lenses. It’s a powerhouse, and I’m still learning my way around it. Thankfully my colleague Adam Dachis has an excellent guide to the basics of photography that’s been a huge help so far.

To that end, maybe this Sunday I’ll take that camera to the market and do some shooting, if I can muster up the nerve. It takes a certain amount of fearlessness to take photos in public when no one else is: fearlessness that I don’t know if I have quite yet. I know a lot of people who post beautiful photographs on a regular basis, and I used to do it with my phone (until my poor OG Droid’s camera stopped working,) I’d love to be one of them again.

Anyway. Back to the real world. Things to do, places to go. Still struggling every day with living that life in my head. It keeps changing, which I suppose is what makes it beautiful. Here’s to the weekend, and here’s to you.

Remember when I was rambling on about how busy I’ve been recently? Yeah – this past week has probably taken the cake for being one of the most busy and challenging I’ve ever had, especially as a writer. In addition to writing for AppScout and Gearlog every day, I’ve also been posting at Geek.com every day. If that weren’t enough, I picked up a side gig over at Sound and Vision Magazine.

But here’s the clincher: I was invited to guest post all day today over at Lifehacker, which means I provided the entirety of today’s content there. I like to think I did well, but head over and check out today’s (Sunday the 17th, that is) posts! Your comments and thoughts are more than welcome, I’d love to hear what you have to say!

Now that it’s all over though, I have a little bit of time to breathe, relax, and think again about the move, which I’ve promptly ignored all week. We still have permits to get for the moving truck, move dates to set and schedule with the building, change of address forms to fill out, utilities to set up, and I’ve got an HTPC to set up so I don’t have to get cable television when we get into the new place.

So yes – it’s been so busy that a lot of the things I would normally spend this time worrying about – like the move and my day job – have gone by the wayside. I’m glad to be able to pay attention to them again – I like having a headstart on tasks, especially if they’ll only be in the next few months.

At the same time, and as much as I’ve noted that it’s been a busy and challenging week, I can also happily say that I’ve loved it all. In fact, the only thing that’s crossed my mind is wondering when I’ll be in a position to leave my day job behind and do this all of the time. I think I might be looking forward to it.

The beautiful rendition of a winter-themed Hatsune Miku is courtesy of eroji at DeviantArt, whose page I found the artwork on. It’s really pretty – and definitely fits the mood right now.

It’s been cold lately – very cold. I haven’t said too much since New Year’s because – at the risk of sounding like a blogger who’s blogging about why he hasn’t blogged – I’ve been pretty busy and under a good clip of stress and feeling the overwhelm. I’ve been writing a lot – not as much as I have in the past, but a really good amount, and some new opportunities are on the horizon that could swing either way, so I’m looking cautiously at the future hoping for the best. Regardless, I think things will turn out okay, no matter what happens.

Still, I could always use a few more gigs, and I’m hoping I find more to do. I do fear, however, that I’m rapidly coming upon a point where I’m stretching my time and sanity to its limit on both the day-job side of things and freelancing side of things. I may have to make a real decision soon about which I would rather prefer, or whether there’s a good and solid way to blend the benefits of each into a way that will make me happy but won’t drive me nuts. I keep thinking to myself that if I had the time to really focus on my writing, I could do so much more, and do so much more meaningful work….and at the same time I think if I had more passion and time (but note the passion) for the day job, I could probably rock that gig more than I already do. Right now I have things at a very interesting and unique balance. At least I have the power to choose where to go from here – or to maintain the status quo.

Along with all of this on my mind I’ve been thinking about the inevitable move downtown to DC this coming summer. These first few months will be behind me before I know it, and it’ll be very quickly time to start minimizing my things, looking for an adequate place, and making sure that we get everything we want in a home without any of the ick that we don’t want. I’m looking forward to the experience more than I can say, but it’s pretty scary at the same time. Those are the things that build character, I suppose.

Even so, it’s a new year, with new opportunities and chances to do new things differently. I’m hoping to kick off 2011 with a bunch of simple self-improvements, some of which I’ve already done – if you head over to Nova Netwerks and my professional portfolio, you can see some of my handiwork. The best part about both of them? I did the right after New Year’s. Great way to get some resolutions under my belt, eh? Pondering similar redesigns to other sites, but then again, when am I not?

Speaking of New Year’s, it was lovely – I spent the evening watching the ball drop, nibbling snacks, and sipping Prosecco with Raevyn, which is always a good time, and of course blowing up Twitter when midnight came around. Since then, it’s been enough of a mad dash – especially with the day job – that I haven’t had much time to feel the post-holiday blues. Still, the snow and freezing rain we’ve been getting on pretty much a weekly basis hasn’t done much to help things. I normally don’t say things like this, but I’m definitely ready for spring – partially because spring is about the same time I have to get ready to move.

Right after New Year’s though, I got to watch the festivities at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) from all the way over here – next year I’ll definitely make it out there, but this year I figured it would be better to save some dough and make sure I’m not stretching my finances for an event that I wouldn’t have gotten a ton of extra money to go to. Still a little bummed I missed some of the events, but all in all I think I got the bulk of the cool stuff secondhand, and I wrote about a ton of it over at Gears and Widgets, so go peek if you’re curious what I thought of the show. All in all though? Tablets and smartphones – that’s all you need to know.

Now then, to take a few moments and make a little plan for myself to organize and minimize. I’m looking forward to getting back in the swing of things here.

Wow, what an incredible couple of weeks. It’s definitely been exciting, to say the least. Sadly, I won’t make it out to CES 2011 in Las Vegas this year, even though I’m registered: the numbers just don’t add up and I have a few other reasons I need to be near home, but I’ll miss heading out there for the event and the spectacle. I’m pretty sure I’ll make it next year though: I just need to register good and early and get my travel plans out of the way early too, so I don’t waffle on the idea until it’s time to make a decision. Regardless, Raevyn and I talked about it and we’re thinking it might be fun to do something else since I didn’t manage to get to Vegas. Maybe Vegas at a different time of year. Or even Seattle, since I’ve always wanted to visit.

In the interim though, I’ve had to deal with much more worldly and and irritating issues. First I get wind that someone’s impersonating me over at the ZDNet blogs, and then I get word that someone’s claimed – in their effort to try and figure out who one of their more annoying community members really is – that their troll-in-residence is actually somehow me. Now, prior to this fiasco I’d never set foot in the ZDNet blogs unless I passed through because I read an article and summarily left – I certainly never left a comment and I didn’t even have an account. It was pretty apalling to see the whole spectacle. I railed about it at Gears and Widgets, and here’s hoping the whole thing blows over soon.

No sooner than I was past that did I find out about The Great Gawker Hack of 2010, and sure enough after digging through the hashes myself I learned that yup – my account information had been compromised. Now I use strong passwords everywhere, so the encrypted database meant that luckily it would take a good long time for my password to be uncovered (I hope, anyway) but that didn’t stop me from changing my password over at Lifehacker and io9, not to mention just about everywhere else on the Web, just for good measure. Just one more annoying thing, eh?

Still, aside from those two annoyances, I’ve been trying desperately to get into the holiday spirit. The office holiday party was last week, and I think it was a lovely affair, even if it was held in our office building (usually the corporate bigwigs rent out a fancy hall or something) – but it went off smashingly. The food was fantastic, the music was great, and even though I didn’t win one of the raffled off iPads, it was still a great time. I think part of the reason I haven’t really gotten into the spirit yet is because I haven’t started my holiday shopping. At all.

I’ve even published holiday gift guides at The Classy Geek and at Gears and Widgets, but I haven’t bothered to take my own advice and go shopping for the people I have to buy for. I don’t want to be a last minute shopper, but…urgh.

In wonderful news though, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is out, and has happily rekindled my love for the game. I still don’t have as much time as I’d love to dedicate to it, so leveling is slow going for me, but considering the huge gaps between levels and the fact that our guild – even with the expansion – is woefully quiet and largely silent, means I can take all of the time I want and need. The collector’s edition I picked up is gorgeous though, and the art book is especially fun to flip through.

In other news, I’ve been pleasantly trying out Diaspora and rather like it, frankly. It’s definitely an alpha, but the polish and features in it so far give me faith for what the service could be – and how much unlike Facebook it makes me feel. It’s cleanliness and focus on privacy makes me want to share with friends, as opposed to Facebook which makes me terrified to post anything. Still, I don’t want to give too much away: I do have to write up Diaspora for Appscout.

Now then, back to playing Poker Night at The Inventory for me. I never thought I’d have so much fun playing a poker game – and it only cost me three bucks. Maybe a few hands will perk me up to the point where I can do some holiday shopping. Maybe I should hang some Christmas lights this year too, that’d be festive!

Or maybe I should start thinking about New Years’ parties…

I’m loving Miku in those autumn colors up there. I don’t have much more time to use these autumn themed images, sadly – full-on Winter is descending rapidly.

For those keeping score, the fondue experiment turned out fabulously the second time around, and we had more delicious treats for dipping at the same time. Since Raevyn and I have been spending more of our weekends together, we’ve been doing a lot of cooking, and it’s been wonderful. This past weekend we got to discussing foods that I vaguely remember from living in Hawaii, and used a tin of Spam that I had picked up idly one day to make some spam and eggs over rice. Turned out beautifully, so much so that I think I’d love to do it again at some point soon. After all, I do have leftover spam.

Aside from the cooking though, the weeks have been spinning by in something of a blur. I don’t think I’m entirely ready for the holidays and the “obligation season,” as I often refer to it, when we’re all obligated to visit family, spend a lot of money, and do a lot of traveling in cold weather when all too often all we really want is the opportunity to stay at home where it’s warm and do something chill for ourselves. Still, there’s no stopping the progress of time, and even though it might not sound like it at first blush, I really adore the holidays, so I’m looking forward to them.

The shops are open late, the lights are all bright and glittery, and world just seems to move just a little bit faster but stay alive just a little bit longer. It’s a wonderful thing and I’m looking forward to being able to hit a local Best Buy around midnight and not worry that the store will be closing in the next few minutes.

Oh, before I forget – I uploaded a bunch of photos over Photowerks; check out the 2010 Album for some of the new stuff, including pics from Otakon, the Renaissance Festival, and unboxing pics of my new laptop, among others.

That aside though, I’ve been looking forward to a number of things coming in the next year or so – thinking more about moving downtown and the kind of place that we may get, and thinking about the furniture I’ll probably have to put away in a small storage space because any apartment downtown will likely not be as large as some of the suburban places I’ve lived in. I’m so eager that I’m almost planning it before it’s really worth planning – since it’ll be a downtown move, there’ll be much Craigslist scouring in the months ahead of the move to find something really nice. I’m thinking about what other opportunities may be downtown as well, but we’ll see how that all turns out.

Regardless, I’m looking forward to a number of things in the near future, and even though last week especially was particularly stressful, both on the full-time job front and the freelancing front and the monetary front (my poor car went into the shop for a fairly expensive repair) and just about every other front, I’m feeling much better this week. I think I can credit a lovely weekend for most of it.

Speaking of which, I can’t help but start thinking about a new car, even though I love my current one – I sank a good chunk of change into getting the windshield replaced last week, and then again into an engine repair that I noticed when I started smelling burning and saw smoke rising from the hood. My car is about 7 years old, but it’s in great working order aside from repairs here and there, and running the numbers a pricey repair now is still less expensive than the car payments I would have laid down on a new vehicle between now and the last time it was in the shop, so it works out okay – but still. Maybe it’s a little technolust for a more updated vehicle that’s getting under my skin.

In other news though, I managed to snag my glorious new laptop last week, and I adore her. I’ve named her Ganymede, which works with the naming convention – the Macbook Pros that I’ve owned so far have been named Io, Europa, and now Ganymede. Raevyn has Io these days, and Europa is now my backup machine (and needs to have her iSight camera fixed) and Ganymede is the shiny new hotness. I have a screencap of the spec of the system here, if you’re curious. So far though, the added RAM and that SSD has resulted in some killer video and gaming performance.

To help pay for that beautiful new laptop, my newest feature is up at Tom’s Guide, where I review three potentially overlooked Android mobile phones. I’m on to some hot phone scoops at Tom’s Guide, and if my editor can keep up with the pitches I keep sending her, I might be able to do more soon in addition to my work for Ziff Davis, and my regular posts at Gearlog and AppScout. I’m still on the hunt for more places to write though, don’t you worry about that.

So yes, aside from a few setbacks, things are progressing nicely. I do regret that I don’t have nearly as much time as I usually do to idly play video games, especially World of Warcraft, since I’m pretty much the only writer left again at the Azeroth Metblogs, which is a shame considering how little I’ve played recently. Still, I’d like to get into it again and play some more, especially with Cataclysm coming in the next couple of weeks, so we’ll see how that turns out. I definitely know that after the move downtown, I’ll have a little more time for relaxing video games, no doubt, but I don’t want that time to come at the expense of other important things and living the urban lifestyle I want to live down there. I’ll have to be careful about that.

Still, Cataclysm looks shiny, and runs really well on this new laptop.

What a whirlwind couple of weeks! When last we spoke, I was coming up on my birthday, and looking forward to it with great anticipation. Well, my birthday delivered; and I’m very gracious to Raevyn for arranging a weekend of laser tag with some pretty awesome people from ThinkGeek, way more gifts than I probably should have gotten for my birthday, and delicious Mexican food (seriously I think we had Mexican every night that weekend.) I’m still sorting through the goodies I got that weekend, but I did discover that I have an affinity for Chile Rellenos, love laser tag almost entirely too much, and really wish weekends were longer than they were. Seriously, my birthday weekend was probably the best as it has been in years.

At the same time, the following week was a whirlwind of activity – I snagged a Roku XDS for review, subsequently penned that review, and saw it published over at Tom’s Guide in all of its redesigned glory. At the same time I picked up a couple of Android phones to review, put them through their paces, and just last night submitted that review to my editor at Tom’s, so when that goes up I’ll share the news too.

It’s not like I haven’t been busy at Gearlog and AppScout – I’ve published a couple of hands-on reviews there too, including one of the keyboard I’m using right now, the newly released Gigabyte K8100, which I absolutely adore.

Still, the weeks have been a mess of activity at work and home, and the following weekend actually took Raevyn and I to the Maryland Renaissance Festival for both days of the weekend. The first day we actually were lucky enough to get in for free, thanks to a really nice couple who had two spare tickets because their family didn’t show up that day, and they were only good for the day. They just handed them to us before we could buy our own, so in we went and promptly spent the money were were planning to spend on admission on food on a stick, mead, and oyster shooters.

We had so much fun we went back the next day to see the things we didn’t see the first time, and well – considering that Sunday was the last day of the festival for the season, it was the Day of Wrong, which means we saw lots of crazy costumes, people doing spectacular things, and a crowd that wasn’t afraid to drink and have a good time. It was actually a lot of fun. I think last weekend and this weekend were the first weekends I’ve actually spent relaxing in ages.

That’s not to say that the weeks haven’t been busy in their own way – I think I’ve taken the whole concept of hustling my freelance writing up a notch, and it’s workable – I don’t feel so busy that I can’t stand it, even though I admit I’m not spending nearly as much time gaming and relaxing as I used to. I miss it a bit, and think I’ll carve some time out to do more of it, especially now that I’m getting the hang of things. More pitches, more hands-ons, more posts, more writing. It’s the name of the game.

Writing aside, I finally picked up a new pair of noise cancelling headphones to celebrate my new desk location in the office, and they’re fabulous. I’m a little embarrassed to talk about them – at some point I’ll let you know which ones I got, but let’s just say they’re music and noise-cancellation focused, and they deliver in both categories, despite their price and the name attached to them. Yeah, that oughta out me. But hey, they’re good! What can I say? Besides, keeping them on in the office helps me write faster and work a little harder. That’s right, I’m measuring my productivity in terms of the music I get to listen to.

How else do you think I’ve been able to keep things at The Classy Geek running so smoothly? Speaking of which, I’ve been meaning to start a little something special over there on the weekends. Maybe this weekend is as good a time as any…

In other news, the leaves are all but gone, and the ones that remain are brilliant shades of red and orange and yellow – there’s no turning back now; it’s fall and heading on quickly to winter. I’ll miss all the foliage, but before it’s too lush and thick again, I’ll be packing my things up and planning a move to what will hopefully be a lovely modern space downtown in Washington, DC proper. I’ve always wanted to live in a city, and I still have my sights set on New York City, but until things with my family and health smooth over a little bit, I’ll stick close to home and get the best of both worlds and try to find a nice place downtown. We’ll see how it works out – I’ll probably have to downsize quite a bit in the process. It’ll be educational.

This weekend though, hopefully a more successful repeat of last weekend’s fondue experiment (I added entirely too much corn starch last week. I mean entirely too much, in orders of magnitude.) and a little kick-back time relaxing. I think after all of the work I’ve been doing in the past couple of weeks I deserve it.

This past week has been a beast, there’s no getting around that fact. Waking up in the middle of the night so irritated at work that I can’t get back to sleep, moving desks again (although the new desk location is indeed an upgrade when compared to the no-window/next to two huddle rooms and a 10-person conference room/right next to the door seat I had before.) Still change is hard, it always is, and sometimes it’s difficult to adapt. I have to make the effort to adapt, even if I don’t completely embrace the change, so there’s that. How did Tomato Nation put it way back in 2005? Oh yeah, down in number 19, one of my favorite quotes ever:

Change is hard; that’s too bad. Effort counts. Make one. Your mommy’s shift is over.

Ain’t that the damned truth.

I’m sitting at my desk at the office, watching the beautiful sunset (I posted a great shot of the gorgeous weather today earlier) and thinking about all of these changes while killing time to let Raevyn get on her way home from the office so I don’t beat her to her apartment tonight. There’s a lot going on, and a lot going on in my head.

Some of it is well ironed out, I can say that much: I’m content freelancing right now, I want to see how things go with the day job before making a decision to stay or go (but I’m keeping my resume and writing samples sharp in case a good offer comes along) but the things I’m more concerned about are more philosophical, existential. I feel like I’ve been losing sight of who I’ve been writing for lately. I mean, I’ve always written for me primarily – other readers be damned – but when you’re trying to build an audience by writing content that appeals to more people than just you, it’s difficult to not slip into the mindset where you have to try and cater to other people’s tastes all the time, and when you don’t or don’t get feedback, feel depressed about it. I find myself hungry for community and comments while I want them to grow organically, not by fudging it somehow, or stretching myself too thin (something else I’m worried about.)

The same applies for my freelancing too – I freelance for a lot of places with great built-in communities, but I keep wanting to be more of a star, and I need to keep that tempered with my desire to actually do good work. I know you can be both – some of my favorite writers and bloggers, journalists and reporters, folks like Gina Trapani and Xeni Jardins and Cory Doctorow and Lance Ulanoff and Patrick Norton and on and on – they all know that if you do good work and engage with it, the people will rally later. I just can’t help wonder if I’m missing something sometimes though, some switch I could flip to really get that ball rolling. Maybe that switch is just more time, I don’t know.

People say that’s the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and hoping for different results. I know better than that. That’s the definition of quantum mechanics. Trust me, I’m a physicist.

To add to the whole shebang, I’ve been itching for some redesigns. I really like The Classy Geek, but Gears and Widgets is getting a little stale. I finally found the tags in the CSS I can use to change the layout width, but when I do it I’m not too sure I like what I see. I also spent a little time in a new theme that would work well for GnW, but the more I customized it the more I actually disliked it. There might be potential there, but I think I just got overwhelmed. The same applies here – the layouts and themes are a little old, and they’re starting to show their age.

Don’t get me wrong, simplicity works and works well – but who doesn’t like new toys now and again? I’m not even going to get into Not So Humble‘s simple three-column layout. No one really goes there anyway and I have a bigger following at the Not So Humble Alternet Blog anyway, actually, which I’m really proud of.

The funny thing is that I’m all nice and registered for CES in January, and likely traveling back to Las Vegas for the festivities, assuming the fine folks at PC Mag are willing to let me cover the event. Even if they won’t, I still think it’ll be a great opportunity and a great show.

Now then, to get in the car, fire up Pandora, and hit the road. Maybe I can find some solace this weekend.

It’s been a hell of a week, I’d be lying to say it were anything otherwise. There’s been stress on virtually every thing of influence in my life: work, family, love life, all of it. That being said, a lot of it has smoothed itself over around the end of the week, so they’re easier to deal with or gone entirely. One of the things I’m grateful for is the ability to talk to my love and my family in ways that I can’t really talk to a lot of people, and especially ways that are open and honest, even if we weren’t able to talk like that before. Between talking to my parents about work and talking to Raevyn about everything, I think I feel a lot better about the stresses I’ve been dealing with. Now I just have to go and deal with the things that have been getting to me, you know?

Also many many thanks to Pastilla for reaching out to me to chat about things – we commiserated for a while about how we’re both the type of people who are at our worst when we’re flailing and feeling like our situations are out of control, and she made the point to remind me that I should take some time to do something wholly and entirely for myself; something that I really want to do. Maybe find a meditation group, or take a vacation to a place I want to go. I hadn’t thought at all about doing something just for me in ages. Like I said over at over at Plurk, when I was younger I just wanted to be needed – by someone, for something. Now that I’m an adult, I would love just one day when no one needed me for anything.

Of course, it’s been a lovely weekend and tomorrow it’s back to the grind and back to work, but I think there are good things on the horizon for me, one way or the other – it is, as always, just a matter of reaching for them as much as I can.

We’ll have to see how things go with work, but it’s comforting to know that if things don’t work out, I always have the option to look for something else. I also know that I have the freedom to look for more freelancing gigs: something I also want to do. I think I’ll need to update my writing clips though with a few more recent samples of work that I’m really proud of. The trick of course is to identify which of some of that recent work I’ve thought is particularly compelling. I’m pretty sure my resume is up to date as well, so it’s worth looking for some new and challenging full time work if the changes at the current gig don’t work out.

On top of that, I’m still thinking of moving downtown to DC, and Raevyn and I need to look at neighborhoods and see which ones might be ideal. It’ll take some work and we have a good, long head-start, so hopefully that’ll be more fun than anything else. In the meantime though, it’s all about making sure I keep doing the things I know how to do well and stick to my passions. Wish me luck.

In other, lighter news though, last night Raevyn and I headed over to our local Mongolian Grill for some custom-made bowl dinner, since she’d never been to a restaurant like that and I haven’t been in ages and wanted to go with someone other than the folks at work who keep asking me about it. We had some dinner, and then walked a few storefronts up to the Frisco Grille for some craft beer. While I really liked the german doppelbock they had on tap, I think the Dogfish Head Imperial Stout stole both Raevyn and I’s hearts that night, and we gleefully drank a couple of them each. It was a really relaxing evening and a welcome, delicious respite from all of the worries and troubles that had been getting to me over the course of the week.

These weekends are definitely a welcome escape, and it’s difficult to get back into the swing of things during the week – I’ve had a little trouble sleeping through the nights these past few weeks, and I’m hoping it’s really just due to the stress of everything going on around me. As things settle down, I’m hoping I don’t have that “look forward to the weekend” mentality as soon as Monday morning rolls around. Still, it’s not as though I don’t have anything to look forward to during the week: I love my writing and I love the evenings I have to relax and play some games here and there; I just wish the days weren’t so frustrating.

Even as I say that though, I know that the only person who can really do something about those frustrating daytimes is me, and maybe it’s about time I push myself out of my comfort zone and do something about it. No time like the present.

That and spend a little more time over at Frisco. Those nachos were great, and the beer was better. Plus it’s pretty much on the way home from the office. More pictures of the bar, the drinks, and the live blues playing in there while we were there are over at Lorelei Complex. That reminds me, I want to get an early start on this week’s article over at The Classy Geek!

The shot above is something like my own contribution to Our Secret Stash of Stuff, which DBlume brought to my attention over at Plurk. I think everyone there was intrigued by the notion: putting everything that you carry around with you out for everyone to see. In some cases it’s the first time any of us put it all out in an arrangement that you could take in at one time with the eye. It’s so easy to just stuff things into a bag when you think you need them, but how often do we really take in what we carry with us every day?

The photo, with tags, is available over at Flickr, along with a pair of close-up shots of each side of the larger photo. You can enlarge this one just by clicking on it. Yeah, it’s kind of impressive the sheer amount of stuff that I carry around in my bag every day.

So it’s been a long enough time since Otakon, but I’d been meaning to post this tidbit for at least a couple of weeks. Between life and work and freelancing, things have been changing pretty rapidly around me, and I’ve been struck with the task of figuring out how exactly I plan to change – if at all – to adjust to them. I’m seeing familiar faces leaving the day job and my freelancing gig, and I’m pretty bummed about it, but I have to soldier on as much as I can. I suppose this is the benefit of diversification, right?

Still, it’s always difficult to watch so many things change around me and then have to deal with how I want to respond. Even at the day job things are changing pretty significantly, and I have to decide what I want to do about it. I could find something new, I could drop it entirely and focus on freelancing, I could continue to walk the tightrope that I have been…the choices go on and on. That’s my biggest dilemma at the moment.

In somewhat brighter news, the loot is all unpacked from Otakon, and I really need to go ahead and upload my photos of the con and the aftermath to Photowerks. I have plenty – and while I didn’t take as many photos as I really wanted to, I definitely had a wonderful time, and I’m still thinking about my next time away from the office and where I want to go. The longer I wait, the fewer options I have though – I’m pondering another holiday-time trip back to New York City come December, and I’m definitely thinking about going back to CES in January 2011. Maybe I should just save my pennies for then and wait.

In other news, my lease is up in May of next year, and I’ve been thinking about what it might be like to move downtown to Washington DC for a couple of years, to prime myself for the downtown life that I’m looking forward to when I eventually move to New York City. It’ll be fun looking for a place to live in a city, and I think between that and New York I’ll have done some of the things I wanted to do before eventually – someday – settling down in the Seattle area.

I know, I’m a little lofty about it, but I don’t want to lose sight of those dreams. In the interim, I have a few priorities to refocus on, like saving the money to get there and reducing my own personal debt. I’m not in bad shape, but there’s always room to improve and plan for the future.

Of course, there’s that, there’s more pimping I want to do for The Classy Geek, and there’s some redesign work I want to do at Gears and Widgets. Maybe I should make a list, that usually helps.

This week went by much more smoothly than last week; a lot of people were out of the office on my side of the building, so things were nice and quiet, and I was able to work in some modicum of peace while most people were away. Unfortunately, a number of people who normally bother me anyway were still there, so I still managed to take at least one day to myself to work from home so I truly had some peace and quiet. It was blissful, and I need to do it again soon.

I would say I need to do it next week if I weren’t going to be out of the office later in the week for Otakon. It’ll be another beautiful vacation, and after Wednesday I won’t be in the office until the following Tuesday. I’m really really looking forward to it, and I’m also looking forward to being out of touch with the office. I can’t wait, and I’ll be taking tons of pictures.

I also managed to finish a number of articles I’d been meaning to write this week, including a keyboard roundup that should go live at Tom’s Guide sometime next week. I’m looking forward to that one going up – I got to play with some pretty interesting toys in order to write it. The writing circuit has been heating up a little, and I’ve even been authorized to post a little more often at Gearlog, so keep an eye out for me over there.

I’d been thinking after some of the events earlier in the week that maybe I talk about my writing a bit too much, or maybe I write too many long-form posts, but I think I’m mostly over both of those worries now. I talk about my writing because I’m a writer and it’s my passion – I think some people should be so lucky as to have their passion identified, and some people should be so lucky as to be working on their passion to the point where they can discuss it the way I do. And when I look at some of the most popular blogs on the Web and see where they’re linking when they post their content, I see all long-form articles at the content sources and short form pieces at the aggregators.

I made a commitment to myself a long time ago that I was tired being just a content distributor: I wanted to be a content creator as well. I want to write new and interesting articles, damned if they’re longer than some people’s snack-size attention spans can handle, and not just link to all of the new and interesting articles that other people are busy writing.

With all of that aside, I think I’ve been doing pretty good by myself lately. Next week is my first vacation since I traveled to San Fran a few months back, and that wasn’t so much a vacation although I like to think I made the best of the time. I checked my available vacation and sick leave a couple of days back just to make sure I’m set for Otakon, and it’s official: I need to plan another trip after Otakon is over. I’ve accured far too much leave to not actually take any.