Yes – those cherry blossoms? They’ll be back soon.

Last week I took a vacation. A serious, well deserved vacation – the kind where I actually unplug from the net (not that I wanted to, the nature of the trip forced me to,) spent time with the lovely Raevyns, had a great time relaxing, got some reading done, and saw some amazing sights.

Thanks to her company, every year the staff get to take a big vacation together in celebration of the company’s performance the previous year and for surviving the holiday season. So this year, they booked their employees and their families and significant others for a 4-night western Caribbean cruise, aboard the fabulous Celebrity Century, a ship awesome enough to have its own Wikipedia page.

I’ll work on getting you guys the photos soon, but the vacation itself was incredible. Sure, we had satellite television on board (I got to watch the BBC World Service! and Sky News! and Cartoon Network in Spanish!) but Internet access was so prohibitively expensive and the trip only a few days that it didn’t make sense to spend the money on it just to check email and post to Twitter. So I put my phone in airplane mode, carried it around as my camera, and didn’t think twice about it.

Now if there’s anything you should know about me, it’s that I’m not a huge fan of unplugging. My idea of vacations and relaxation tend to involve fiddling around on the Internet for leisure activities, so it was something of a culture shift for me – but it’s not one I had a problem taking to. There was enough to do on-board, enough people to hang out with, enough to drink (Raevyn sprung for the unlimited premium drink plans – which included tasty adult beverages,) and enough other things to see that I can’t say I was ever bored. Whether I was taking photos of the port of call at Cozumel, Mexico or I was relaxing on the deck just reading, I don’t think I was ever wanting for things to do.

Speaking of which, on the trip I managed to tear through Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It! in about a day, and it was incredible. Virtually every tip for building communities, attracting attention to your work, and living your passion are things that I absolutely plan on doing. It may sound cheesy, but after you hear what he has to say, you won’t think twice about building your “personal brand.” I then moved on to The Unfettered Mind: Writings from a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman by Takuan Soho, which is a thinner book but much more of a dense and philosophical read.

So reading Crush It! got me thinking about the technologies that I currently use and whether I’m making the most of the ones available to me. I started thinking about some of my blogs that I love but that I update out of principle, not because I think they’ve beneficial to my writing, and thought about what I’d like people to focus on when they find me on the Web. I thought about ways to make my brand more focused, and put out more content at the sites that matter the most for where I’d like to go. I’ve got some work to do – I picked up a couple of new domains to keep in my back pocket, and I’m already planning a move to PicPlz instead of my moblog, moving to my Flickr account over maintaining Gallery over at PhotoWerks, and even pondering a Tumblr account for those quick-hit videos and things I want to share but don’t want to burden my friends at Twitter or Plurk with.

We’ll see – it’s a lot to do on top of everything else, but I’m pretty excited about doing it.

I’ve also got some other things on my mind that I’ll keep under wraps right now for fear of jinxing them or making the wrong move publicly, but I’ll just say that good things are afoot, no matter what.

Now then, I’ve got work to do. Someone remind me not to sleep the weekend away?

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.

I can’t even begin to fathom how many words I’ve put to paper this week. Wednesday and Thursday alone I wound up writing somewhere around 9-10,000 words by the time I was finished updating Gears and Widgets, doing my Macross Plus feature over at The Classy Geek, and then writing the hands on reviews that posted today at Gearlog and AppScout.

Just today I wrote the hands-on with Angry Birds for Android, which was pretty remarkable to finish up so quickly, but that only adds to the Sonos Controller for iPad hands-on I did, and the ION Discover DJ hands-on, and perhaps the one I had the most fun doing recently, the Gigabyte Aivia K8100 hands-on. Most of you have probably seen all of these links before elsewhere, but you know, I really can’t help it when I put so much work into these reviews. I know, I know, a lot of bloggers and writers for far more popular outlets do this stuff all the time, but I’m really hitting my groove with a lot of these, so I’m proud of myself to say the least.

The Sonos hands-on was a ton of fun, and probably the one I’ll be most sad to see the equipment shipped back to them. The ZonePlayer S5 itself is a really sleek piece of equipment, and I love the fact that you can control it from a computer or an iPad or iPod or iPhone completely wirelessly. They sent me a pair along with the iPad that had their app pre-loaded on it, and there’s something stupidly futuristic about walking around the apartment with an iPad and firing up music in rooms I haven’t entered yet as I go.

I hit on it at the end of the article, but there’s something really really amazing about looking back to even 10 years ago when if you wanted high quality audio in your home you had a cabinet full of receivers and individual components and you had to go twist a bunch of knobs just to change tracks or bump up the volume. Now, just tap your iPad to switch tracks, play something different, or even listen to the radio – and you can do it all with a box that’s light enough to heft with one hand but powerful enough to sound out a large room. The future is now.

That’s not to say all of the gear and games weren’t fun to use – I really like doing hands-on reviews, and I have a couple more up my sleeve for another publication. I’m starting to get into mobile phone reviews, which I think is a great growth area for me, I just need to pay attention to some of my favorite reviewers (folks like PC Mag’s Sascha Segan and Boy Genius over at BGR) to see how they do it and some common things they include in all of their reviews. Now if only I can get some of the carriers to freaking respond to me, I’ll be all set. Gotta love Verizon Wireless though – they got back to me the quickest, and now I have a shiny new Droid 2 by Motorola and Samsung Fascinate (aka Galaxy S) on my desk at home to put through its paces.

All of the writing this week aside, it’s been remarkable watching the fall descend on us so rapidly. A couple of days of wavering temperatures and suddenly the world outside is a dozen different shades of green, red, yellow, and brown. The drive to the office this morning was littered with raining leaves, and the wind is just starting to blow hard enough that the first loose leaves are shaking free of their branches and littering the ground. Autumn is here, and she’s beautiful.

To boot, my birthday is this weekend. I don’t make a big fuss about it usually, but Raevyn is taking me and a couple of her coworkers off to play laser tag tomorrow, which I think will be fun if I can get past my usual awkward social anxiety. People who know me probably wouldn’t imagine that I get such a ridiculous feeling of dread when it comes to meeting new people and getting out and doing things like this – after all, once I’m there I tend to settle into the experience just fine and have a great time to the point where I don’t want to leave when it’s all over – but leading up to it the whole situation makes me kind of anxious. I should work on that.

Still, I had thought everyone was going to forget my birthday, but here my parents come on Wednesday with cupcakes and a birthday card, and here comes Raevyn with a big box from ThinkGeek that she’s instructed me not to open until Sunday. It feels nice. Really nice.

For those not in the know, I burned my wrist pretty badly last week – the day after my last post, actually. I tend to heal pretty quickly (go go mutant healing powers) so my wrist is back in action now, just really raw with reddish pink skin visible and the rest of my poor charred skin slowly peeling away. It’s sore and painful to the touch or to pressure, but thankfully I know how to treat a second-degree burn (not by research – I had a second-degree burn on my left hand back in 2002…through pretty much the same circumstances…hot oil will wreck you, take it from me) so I didn’t have to go to the hospital or anything.

I mean, let’s be clear – I could have gone to the hospital, but I opted not to because I burned myself at 10pm, would have gone to the ER and had to wait until someone saw me (even though I live close to the hospital, it would have been difficult getting there alone) and then had them treat me the same way I was treated in the ER back in 02 when I burned my hand. Thankfully that’s the kind of experience you remember through and through, so I knew to keep my hand in cold water, sleep with it wrapped in an icy towel, and then keep it covered and covered in antibacterial ointment and silver cream until your body recovers. I’ll spare you the gory details, but thankfully I’m coming around to normal, and hopefully in another couple of weeks I’ll have pigment back in it.

In other news, the week has been good, if not a little stressful what with everything going on at the office and trying to take care of my poor burn at the same time. As usual, I could definitely use some time away from the office, but alas, I don’t think I’m going to get any until Otakon comes around at the end of next month. Still, it’s something to look forward to, for the most part.

Speaking of which, I should pre-reg. Sheesh – still haven’t done that.

Aside from that, I’ve been doing a little work behind the scenes to get my writing in-line for better and brighter things. Still doing the usual routine over at Gearlog and AppScout, and thrilled to do it – my editor’s allowed me to post a bit more often, so that means I make a little more come the end of the month from freelancing. Supplimental income is good. Also, I’m on two separate assignments now for Tom’s Guide, so those will be tidy projects to turn in at the end of the month, thankfully.

Signed up for affiliate programs in a couple of places so when I link to goodies on any of my blogs, especially sites like Gears and Widgets or The Classy Geek, I can make a little bit if people click on them and buy what I’m talking about. Hopefully that’ll help a touch too.

Still, thinking about other places I can get my foot in the door. I’ve been a little troubled that I may be reaching my writing bandwidth cap, but I don’t think that’s the case – I think I still have some room to grow, it’s just getting to the point where it’ll be challenging to manage my time such that I can enable it. Right now my weekends tend to be pretty well eaten, and while I don’t want to change that right now, I might carve out a little more evening time to pay more attention to my writing time – and myself, for that matter, and get back on the DDR pads, for example.

If anyone has any ideas, do let me know. Always eager to take suggestions from friends or those who have some advice. It really does seem sometimes like I just don’t have the time to do all of the things I really want to do….unless I remove the things that I don’t want to do from my life.

You probably know where this is going – I’ve been reading things like Danny Choo’s “Pursue Your Passion” story, but I keep thinking I’m just not there yet. I don’t know if I’m at the point where I want to make writing a full-time gig, or I want to keep doing what I’m doing now and write on the side. I don’t know if moving to New York will enable me to take writing full time or not. I don’t know what the right financial situation that would enable me to do it looks like, although some of the things I’ve been doing are designed to help me get there. I don’t even know if I’m just letting myself be “comfortable,” as Danny puts it, waiting for something to happen to me instead of taking this thing by the reins while I have the time to do it.

I just don’t know. And I don’t know if I’m actually trying to find out, or if I’m sitting back and going through the motions without really giving it much thought, or if I’m just afraid there are too many significant external influencers on my life right not to keep me from making the leap that I may want to make.

Whoa. This got kind of heavy, huh? That was unintentional, but it’s good to have out in the open.

In any event, this weekend it’s up to see my family for Father’s Day, and to set up his gift. He’s already opened it, so it’s no secret that I picked up a ASUS VH242H 24-inch Monitor and a pair of Gunnar Computer Glasses to help reduce eyestrain when using that nice big new display.

The best part? I already know he loves it!

Now, I’d better go get a cup of coffee before I kick off this weekend.

Midweek update, what?

Of all of the blogs that I write for and that I update, I normally save Millennium Winter for the end of the week, when I have the most mental room and free time to write something that I think is really interesting and unique and special. Admittedly though this week I have a little more time than usual to work on things – ssshh, don’t tell my boss.

Last week was lovely; the week itself was kind of rough and tiring, but I managed to catch up on my writing and blogging and really get a good head start on a number of posts, including some of my most recent posts over at The Classy Geek, including what I think was one of my best posts to date, Debunking the Myth of the “Nice Guy.”

The weekend was lovely, and with the help of the lovely Raevyn, I managed to get the bulk of my storage room all tidied up and there’s a nice big pile of stuff in the middle of the floor that will eventually get carted out when I call a junk removal service to get rid of it all for me. The next step is to take care of my storage cabinet, which is also in my building, but also likely contains a great deal of stuff that I don’t really want to keep, or that I don’t want to hold on to.

This all works perfectly with my plan to get my parents’ couch that they’re trying to get rid of into my living room and get the futon that currently serves as my couch into the spare room so I have a space for people to sleep if they want to come over and visit. Amusedly enough, I’ll probably do all of this by the end of the month.

In other news, I think I won’t bother cosplaying at all for Otakon this year. I have a costume, but it doesn’t fit at all, and I really don’t want to spend the money on new costumes this year when I’m thinking about buying a new Macbook Pro. I’ll try to take tons of photos otherwise to make up for the lack, but then again I never really took pictures of myself cosplaying anyway.

Part of me is starting to think I’m getting too old for this kind of geekiness though, which is a shame – I don’t want to be, by any stretch, and I’m certainly not the oldest person I’ve ever seen at Otakon, but the average age of attendees still seems to be much younger than I am. The bright side though is that I usually attend with friends, so I have people to hang out with while I’m there.

Even so, I still have a little shopping list of things to pick up while I’m there, so it’s time to start pinching pennies and making sure I can afford them if I want to pick them up.

So much to do, so little time – but you know, aside from some irritation at the office (that’s ever-present, as usual) I’m pretty upbeat about it. Otakon, possibly even Blizzcon, maybe another little jaunt in the near future, and big plans – very big plans. I’ve even settled on staying in my apartment for another year when the lease comes up in August but starting to look for another place that…better meets my needs, I think.

Add to this a bit more freelancing work that I’m actually excited about, plans to get in on some affiliate programs for sites that are relevant to the audiences at Gears and Widgets and The Classy Geek, and you have a pretty busy and happy me.

To say the past week or so has been a whirlwind of activity would be something of a massive understatement. Between all the goings on at the office and then running up to see my parents in the middle of the week and then coming home to try and tidy up the apartment for the first time in a couple of solid weeks. Thankfully a late-night cleaning spree took care of the apartment, most things considered, and I managed to get my warm-weather clothes all laundered so I have clean short-sleeved shirts to wear now that the temperatures are going up high enough that I can’t pretend it’s just a passing event.

Mopped the floors, vaccummed all over, moved my cold weather clothes to the back of the closet and the warm weather ones forward…the only thing left to do is that real bout of spring cleaning I’ve been meaning to do, where I pile up a bunch of items I don’t want anymore and then call a junk service to come and take it all away. I could use a little help with the project though, so I might conscript an unwitting someone to lend me a hand.

That being said though, things are the office have taken a turn for the depressing; we lost a few people and the funding to hire more help has been frozen, so while the workload remains as high as it was at the end of my last major project back in March, it looks like we won’t get any help to deal with the pressure and the increased workload anytime soon. It’s a bit dispiriting, to be blunt, and I’m not sure what I want to do about it. In the interim, I’ll just hang on and see what happens, I suppose.

In other news, Otakon is coming soon, and I should probably go ahead and confirm the reservations and see if there are any upgrades available. It’ll probably be another full house this year. I think I’ll need to pick up an aero-bed to accommodate everyone. This year I have a little bit of a shopping list too – A few things I’m particularly interested in. We’ll see how well that works out when it’s actually time. I would say I have a lot of prep to do, but honestly, I don’t think I have that much to be done if I want things to go nice and smoothly. Sometimes you just have to let things happen the way they’re going to happen.

In other news, the warm weather always makes me tired – I have to admit, I feel more creative and interesting during the fall and winter than in the spring and summer. I feel like I could be doing more if I had more energy – writing more, expanding more, spending more time putting energy into my dreams. I know they’re all opportunities right there in front of me, but in some ways I’m not totally sure if I can stretch as far as I want to in order to get there. I know part of it is just making time for those dreams – the time management skills that have always eluded me to some extent, the ability to know when to stop one thing and start another without getting sucked into it, the ability to quickly and easily switch tasks from one to another that I can actually accomplish given the amount of energy and effort I have at the moment…they’re all things that take time to learn, things that take time to perfect.

Then again, they’re things that I know I have to do. I can’t just have an unmotivated day at the office and just stare at the screen for 20 minutes wishing I didn’t have to do the things that were on my plate at the office and instead desperately try to find something else to do. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I needed to shake things up in a big way, but really? I’m already doing that, so I can’t complain. Shakeups for the sake of shakeups generally don’t accomplish anything unless you take some meaning away from them. This is a lesson I’ve had reinforced several times over lately.

That being said though, I still think it’s time I thought about where my next adventure will take me. I’ll have some time off for Otakon, but I’d like to travel a bit. Whether that takes me back to New York City or maybe somewhere else I haven’t been, I haven’t decided yet. I’m open to suggestions.

I had been planning on picking up a new Macbook Pro and possibly a new iPad in the near future, but I think I’ll be careful about how I pay for those things. The Macbook Pro would easily be a tax writeoff for my writing, but the iPad is entirely a frivolous purchase – although I suppose I can write it off too if I wrote about iPad accessories more than I currently do. Ah, possibilities. Or maybe I’m just lusting after a wishlist, like anyone would.

Anyway – it’s a nice long weekend, ripe for relaxation and recuperation. I’m starting off watching Paprika, then I might move on to a few other anime and DVDs I’ve let pile up over the past couple of weeks. I still sadly admit I have a great deal of media in my collection that’s never had its shrinkwrap removed, and I’d like to do something about that.

But first, I’ll pour myself a drink.

Saying this past week was stressful would be a colossal understatement. I admit there’s a lot of frustration going on at the office, but I can’t tell right now whether it’s legitimate or I just haven’t had time to decompress and get away from the office since the last big project wrapped up and everything else rolled on. The real problem is that I just don’t feel like I can take some time off without being called or other things at the office falling apart because I’m not there to manage them. I’ll have to talk it over with my boss – I really do think I’ll feel better about things if I’m not around for people to rely on for a week or so.

Which I think is the real core of my frustration: someday I’d love to work somewhere (and I’ve never worked in this place, so I don’t think it’s a matter of my current employer) where tasks are given to the people whose job it is to complete them, instead of the people who can be trusted to complete them. An environment contrary to this leads to people who really have little to do feeling stressed because they simply don’t know how to do their jobs, and the people who have tons to do being burnt out because they’re forced to do their own job and pick up the slack for the people who just think they’re busy. It’s a constant frustration of mine, one I know I’ve vented about before. It sucks being the “go to” guy for just about everything because you’re the only one people trust to give them the information they need or get them where they need to go.

The other thing naturally is that even though I’ve managed to not falter on it, the way the day job has been going it’s really cut into the amount of attention I want to spend not just freelancing but keeping up and keeping the creative juices flowing on my own projects. I find myself spending so much time at the office rehashing old processes and instructing people in how to do things that they know how to do but choose to ignore as long as they have someone else to ask that it keeps the creative tap shut.

It’s never been clearer to me that the enemy of creative energy is the repetition of the rote and mundane, especially to people who have no desire to turn on their own creative juices. Surround yourself with creative people with their own passions and you’ll inspire your own. Surround yourself with people who only want things from you or want you to do their work for them and have no passion at all and you’ll find your own well starting to go dry. I think I need more inspiration, whether I stumble on people with passion or I can force myself to find it in the mundane.

In other, more happy news, I’m finally ending my decades-long trend of missing my local wine festival, especially since I live so ridiculously close to it now. I already picked up tickets and hopefully will attend tomorrow – I’m less interested by the live music as I’m thrilled by the opportunity to taste wine from 33 different wineries in the area and maybe check out some craft booths. Should be fun – one vendor even sells bonsai; I might get a replacement for the bonsai I accidentally killed all those years ago (that I’m still bummed about). My current happy little plant could use some company.

I’ve also been meaning to do some spring cleaning of my own, as I think I mentioned last week – I’ve done a little, but I really want to get a nice big pile of junk going and then call a removal company to come and take the crap out of the apartment (since some of it is already too heavy for me to move on my own) and away forever.

While I know the goal of spring cleaning is to decrease the amount of stuff you have (and don’t get me worng, the net benefit will be a decrease in stuff) I’ve also really been jonesing for an iPad. To the point where I had a dream about one earlier in the week – that’s how bad it was. I’ve also been looking curiously at a new Core i7-based Macbook Pro, and then finally having the laptop/backup laptop arrangement I’ve been meaning to have for a while, where my current laptop has a backup somewhere that I can pick up if I have a problem or need to travel and my primary laptop is out of commission or busy.

It doesn’t hurt that I have an i7 in my desktop and love it, really love the high-resolution screen on the new Macbook pros, and kinda want a glossy screen and the new unibody design. Still, I have a little work I want to do on the finances before I really jump at a purchase like that. Although I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to hold off the tide.

Anyway, maybe a little food will stave off this mini-funk. I really want to shake it off and enjoy the weekend – and especially all of the wine tomorrow.

It’s been a pretty busy week, but not in the ways I would have liked. I was hoping that I would have a little more time to myself and to do some of the things I prefer doing, but I’ve had a really hard time leaving work at a decent time lately. I feel like a lot of my personal time has been slipping away, but I know I have control over it to a large extent, so I can’t complain entirely too much.

I’ve been pleasantly busy personally, and I’ve actually managed to log in to World of Warcraft for a change, but mostly to finish the last series of holiday achievements required for the special shiny Violet Proto-drake that comes for doing all of the holiday events. EVen though I’ve managed to log in a little this past week, I don’t know if I’ll be able to ramp back up to the way I used to play, but if I continue to have the occasional day at the office that’s not chock full of meetings, I just might. Here’s hoping.

Speaking of work, I still think I need to take some vacation. The massive project that I was working on has disengaged to some degree, but the pressure is still high to some extent. Like I’ve mentioned over at Twitter, the kind of project management I do is like doing a delicate interpretive dance…in a hail of bullets. Most of them have nothing to do with projects you’re working on, and everything to do with what other people think you should be responsible for – mostly so they don’t have to be responsible for it and can just call you instead. It’s probably the most irritating part of my job. The worst thing about it is if I took a similar role at some of the other companies that I know of, it’d be less organized and more of the things I hate, if you know what I mean.

Part of me is very eager to start pouring some energy into finding more freelancing gigs to make that my full time gig, but then the other part of me really likes the arrangement I have now and thinks I really haven’t made the best of it yet – I think that as much as I want more freelancing work, I think there’s more to what I’m up to these days – getting my finances in order, putting myself in a position where I’d be more comfortable doing more freelance work, managing my time so I didn’t feel awful not staying at my desk until after 7pm every night, and so on.

When I get there, when I get to the point where I can comfortably leave at 6 or 630 regularly, go home, exercise regularly again, manage my finances a little better, and get to bed at a decent time to be up the next day, then I think I can move on. Then again, there’s poison in forcing myself from doing the things I really want to do unless I do something as a pre-requisite – I’ve been learning that a lot lately; if there’s no natural connection between the pre-requisite and the thing I want to do, I may be delaying my own progress for no reason.

Speaking of which, I need to buy some Blu-Ray discs. I’ve had both players for ages and haven’t wanted any Blu-Ray movies yet. Maybe Planet Earth and Avatar. (and now that I look, I can get them together in a combo deal!) Any suggestions?

In other news, let’s get back to me needing a vacation. Maybe go back to New York City. Maybe find somewhere else more spa-ey or retreat-like where I can go get a massage or sit in a jacuzzi tub or somewhere that I can go to get away from the world – somewhere far enough away that the office won’t call my cell phone because someone wants to know how to handle an issue I’m not working on, somewhere I can actually turn my phone off and not worry about the calls I’m missing (okay, I have some work angst right now, I think. Maybe some time off would be a good idea) or something else going on behind the scenes that I need to pay attention to.

Alternatively I can just stay at home and spend the money I would have spent buying myself an iPad, making myself a couple of really nice meals, and soaking in the tub!