(Previously)

http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/09/07/labor-day-challenge-wrestle-your-work-back-into-its-box/
So I was going to say more about this.

If you feel you need to wrestle your work back into its box, there’s no shortage of advice on the topic. The intriguing fad that is decluttering (a.k.a. simplifying your life) is just one approach — but what if you don’t feel exactly overwhelmed by commitments, demands or things outside of work?
Indeed, it seems that many people look beyond work and wonder what else is out there. Your friends are busy, you’re not good at sports, and you can’t afford a fancy art-school drawing class. So what is there?

I've forgotten what I was actually going to say. I've a feeling it was important, and I've lost it.
( things )
Does caring more about 'we' than 'I' make me crazy, or just unbalanced?

Hot Water
I may have been compulsively checking the temperatures at frequent intervals to see what's going on. I hope that running the electric pump which moves the water to/from the solar collector is a lot more efficient than heating the water directly by element because otherwise all I've done is moved a lot of night-rate energy usage to day-rate.

I de-legalised the system yesterday - legally required there's a hot/cold mixer near the tank which is supposed to make sure that the water reaching the tap isn't more than 50something degC. But on a low-pressure system like I have here a significant amount of the pressure at-the-tap (or shower head!) comes from adding in cold at that point to bring the temperature down. So the effective water pressure suddenly started sucking.

Easily resolved by adjusting the mixer to let more hot through :)

~~~
NeverWinter
The party managed to trigger the whole complex into one big fight and made it through pretty much unscathed. I was very disappointed (but the players were happy). It didn't help that all the biggest spells I threw at them were countered by the Heroes Feast they'd eaten the previous session. I agree with a previous acquaintance that large-scale blanket immunities are as broken as Save-or-Die spells, and I think there will be some houseruling of spells going on before the next D&D campaign I run.

~~~
Work-related angst
I have multiple substantial projects on the go but I've been dealing (or rather, not) with a fair amount of angst over the fact that nothing I'm doing is really directed at bringing in paying work. It's not that I don't think I could bring value to - well, pretty much anything - or that I don't believe in what the web can do for a business, it's that I don't believe I have any more right to try and sell (effectively) random strangers of this value that the religious proselytisers that turn up on my doorstep every so often.

It's the exact same reason I lurk in online forums rather than posting - I don't believe that my opinion is any less valid or weaker than anyone else's but it's my opinion and I have absolutely no interest in trying to convince anyone else of its validity or the wrongness of theirs (on the rare occasion I actually think someone is 'wrong' rather than holding a valid alternative viewpoint).

They say you should treat looking for work as a job itself. I think that's mostly crap.

If a job made me feel like this, I should be quitting. (History proves that I don't, but hindsight shows I should have.)

Had a steady day at work, didn't achieve as much as I would have liked towards the end of it and had to discover and fix up one of my old mistakes, which I'm sure it's not the last.

The promised rain never eventuated so I was able to go through with my plan of mowing the lawns when I got home, even did some weeding as well.

This evening I signed my tax return, paid the accountant's bill and entered the tax payments (terminal and provisional) into my forecast spreadsheet. Combined with the recent income downgrade debt-freedom suddenly looks a long way further off, as if I had lost most of the gains I made this year. It's a very depressing feeling.

I know academically that the gains haven't actually vanished, and that I will undoubtedly pay it off much faster than I have allowed for, and even that the provisional was calculated using the current (or even old) tax rates so there is a small chance I may even get a refund next year, and that I'm a hell of a lot better off than most but that doesn't change the sinking feeling that came with seeing those numbers jump.

Only one more thing left on my to do list today, and it's something I havent; been looking forward to.

The week has been a press of trying to get things done in limited time. Nothing vital has fallen by the wayside, but I was ready to snap Thursday evening.

Tonight I'm just blah and doing mindless shit (like playing Spider) to stop descending into a morass.

It's late enough to be bedtime now. Gaming tomorrow.

The useless F$%^ing cat stinky-crapping on the laundry pile at 10pm. All because he wanted to be -let out- of the front door instead of using his freaking cat door or stopping at the dirtbox on the way past to the front door.
-At least I realised what the sudden quiet meant in time to do a rapid clean-up.

My flatmate setting his alarm for the sole purpose of sleeping through it for hours / repeatedly letting it go off for 5 minutes then hitting the snooze (for hours). I'm not sure which is worse - the constant or the intermittant.

Constant broken nights - from cat wanting in/out/fed, from toilet trips due to all the extra water I'm supposed to be drinking, from flatmates alarm starting before freaking 6am.

Back and neck (muscular pain) from holding new posture/ trying to return to old posture. Takes energy to do, takes energy to deal with.
- but the pain in my legs has decreased, so the treatment is working.

So much freaking stuff to do that I hit fatigue point whenever I think about my to-do list. Back appointments, paying work, gaming, prep for gaming, gaming, prep for gaming, gaming, household chores, gardening, ... list of projects a mile long that -I want- to do but just can't find the time/motivaton to actually start/work on. Exhaustion from previous item isn't helping.

Being in the red. Up until this week I was breaking even/gaining ground. Now I'm two months behind, and likely to fall further. Some of those projects I want to get onto involve potential income, which makes not getting to them additionally frustrating.

Dealing with all this shit by myself.

Reaching the point of not caring about anything anymore, having trouble motivating myself to even get out of bed despite the huge amount to do. Hello Edge, my old friend. Shall we walk together awhile?

Chiropractic is expensive. There goes my budget for the next few months even with the discount for paying 12 months upfront.

I measure the expensive things by how long they will take to pay off the mortgage. This is a 2+-monther. The windows were a 10+-monther.The mortgage is growing faster than it is shrinking. I have 2-3 years worth of spending pre-planned already which has been shunted back. This makes me unhappy :(

Need to develop another stream of income.

Not much else going on in my life. Finished Giants last week (I'll write the last installment up eventually) which means I am scrambling to put Neverwinter back in order. Tonight is set aside but...

I went into Uni after work to socialise and seem to have had all my motivation for anything killed.

[wangst]
Want company.
[/wangst]

Quarter past two.

It was a pretty good party.

I can't remember the quote vertabim, but anyway. Went to Stardust yesterday afternoon, found it an entertaining enough fantasy fluff movie.

It's been practically a week since I last updated - not much exciting has happened. Various work related matters that I'm not going to detail, but to note that they really don't want to lose me at the 'office' and I'm enjoying the work so it's all good there. Less good in other projects.

Failed to have critical mass for either Guido's (again) or Neverwinter. Levelling happened with the availabel characters in Neverwinter. Have played some games of MI, failed to do very well in any of them so far.

... have just been reminded about the Nightwatch/Daywatch trip that was on today, that I completely forgot about while I was doing the lawns/two lots of dishes/laundry/visiting my grandmother who was moved into the hospital wing at no-notice yesterday. (At least it's a larger room this time, and might actually be the full-care that the rest-home said the other one would be). My mood is now depressed and irritated at myself.

Might just go to bed.

Coming home from an unispiring first game of MI in place of Guidos to discover the cat has peed somewhere he shouldn't just leaves me hoping that this is a bad end to the week rather than a bad start.

Not teh fnu.

No good calling anyone @ 6 in the morning.

Angst @ LJ instead.

It's going to be a long day.

There's good, and there's bad. Right now I'm trying to stop the bad getting the upper hand.

( yadda yadda )

If the weather is sunny there's always gardening.

the frikin' wheel is going to develop some sort of balance.

Reading a webcomic archive should not be the only thing remotely resembling an 'achievement' in my Monday. (Two hours working doesn't count, because I completely failed at what I was trying to achieve).

( things I could (should) have been doing )
I suck.
( things I want )

Added: Rang mother, organised trip to Ashburton for tomorrow, to sort out grandparent's stuff

New Year's Battle and a few from the party.

Rest of December Alice in Wonderland party, Cat's Soiree, Canoeing on the Avon

~~~
It's been a productive sort of a day - finished (well, closed off) off two work projects, got paid a little, trimmed the roses, ripped out some dead plants, caught up on RSS, posted Neverwinter, two galleries.

I should go out and do something fun tonight.

Damn, stuck on the usual. Maybe there will be something watchable on the TV.

Ultimately we can never be sure of our actions...

...only prepared to live with the consequences and wary of regret.

Today was supposed to be mostly free. The mail-server hassles were supposed to be fixed up last night, a brief meeting with my 'boss' scheduled for this morning so I could configure her computer.

Most of the rest of the day I planned to have to myself, to deal with the post-session admin from last night's game, wash the car, chiil out and maybe do another set of photos.

A presentation I've been invited to attend this evening. More a networking opportunity than anything else, from my perspective.

~~~
An hour fixing up some problems on my 'bosses' computer. Plenty left - two hour session scheduled for Monday.

~~~
Achieved paying the insurance bill. Attempted to shout myself a nice lunch. Prices have gone up, serving size has gone down. The food was still good, but I found it not worth the money. Another small pleasure lost.

~~~
Mail server hassles not fixed. We can't even isolate a cause. It's -probably- a quirk of a setting somewhere in outlook (no-one not using outlook has reported a problem - yet). But some people using outlook are fine. It -could- be related to port 25 filtering by the big ISPs - except some people with each are fine.

My system of course has no problems. I can even create functional outlook accounts for the people who are having problems on their systems. Support is stumped and have become unhelpful.

I have spent most of the afternoon dealing with one computer hassle or another. And I'm not really even getting paid for it.

~~~
[/grizzle]

Confidence in outcome hovering just below motivational threshold for action.

Ingrained rational analytical mindset not helping.

The day was allright, really. Yesterday's game had been moved to today, and forward an hour. There was a pretty tough fight to start with (note - disarming humanoids doesn't stop them threatening if they also have natural weapons, like a bite), but good (bloody sticky shields), then a bit of mucking around, then the sorceror's luck (and/or the DM's patience) finally ran out and she got herself killed.

This evening's game was cancelled due to insufficient players, but I was d. sitting anyway. doth made it home earlier than expected so likewise I made it home early.

Then for some reason my mood plummeted. I'm now capital Grumpy, despite ice cream. I'd analyse why, but I think it would only make things worse :(

Life != happiness. Just to add to my stress, I suspect my casual contract may be about to expire. While that would remove one large source of frustration from my life, I'm enjoying the project itself.