Years ago, I had a really powerful PC, loaded with all of my programming stuff
as well as a bunch of "kill-kill-kill" games. Packed with RAM and processing power,
it was a really sweet machine.
Fast forward a few years. I was in a different place in my life — both
figuratively and actually. Eventually, my "promance" with my PC fell apart, and
for three reasons: - I stopped playing the kill-kill-kill games because I
had a four year-old in my house and usually attached to my hip;
- If I wasn't
playing PC games, what was I doing with it? Paying bills, mostly
- Occasionally
I'd have to use it to connect to work and troubleshoot system problems in the middle
of the night.
I also found that not only was I avoiding my computer, but I was avoiding the
desk it was on, too. My computer desk used to be where I'd go to have fun. But
at that point, it was where I would go to sort and pay bills. In short, that wasn't
a fun place anymore, so I began to avoid it. And that's when I figured out how
wrong it was to actually avoid anyplace in my home.
Years later, I had a work-from-home job for a company near DC. THIS time, I
put my desk someplace in my home that I wouldn't normally go — someplace I would
deliberately have to visit to do work: in a corner of my basement. Great idea --
but execution was a little lacking. I spent hours and hours each day in a musty
basement.
Present day. As a contractor for my current company, I do my work by remote
connection through my personal equipment. Happily, my "office" is in a part of my
home that isn't in the usual stream of life here — and not in a basement (they
don't build basements in this part of Texas). My client has a ton of work and is
very eager to my current project "under our belts," so I work 9-hour days for
them... my weeks seem long, and so the zeal I normally have for working on my
website on the weekends has ebbed.
And that hurts.
I spend so much time in this chair each day — working through a punch list,
tracking my time, taking calls, making notes... no wonder I don't want to sit
here on a Sunday afternoon, even if its to do fun things.
This is a signal to me that I need to slow down, or slog less, to get back to
wanting to fire up QUAKE and mess around for a few minutes. I'll get back there --
I usually do — but right now I just need a little space.
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