Searching for Tao

I thought that I might take this opportunity to post a little catch-up. I've been neglecting this blog for a while now and since it serves a number of purposes, not the least of which is personal record given my shoddy memory I should at the very least keep it up to date with what's going on in my life.

I'm busy. Incredibly busy. Some time ago Shawna pointed me to an article about how busy people live a sort of half life. We never do anything completely, are never able to invest ourselves in something whole-heartedly because we're constantly juggling too much. This has always been a problem for me, but at least now I'm starting to recognise it. The next step of course is to do something about it... suggestions are welcome :-)

So, lets chronicle this latest incarnation of "busy" shall we?

Let's start with the awesome. There's a girl. I've mentioned her before, but now that we're officially together (Facebook says so!), I want to gush a little more again. All that stuff in the aforelinked post is totally true. My heart skips when she smiles and she gets excited about the coolest, nerdiest things. We have a lot in common and this has led to a number of fun conversations and potentially a new project or two. It's all that good stuff that a new relationship is supposed to be, with the promise of some staying-power to boot. I'm going to work really hard not to screw this one up :-)

There's also the paying job, a.k.a., my role as senior programmer at Work [at] Play. They've got me doing a lot of Drupal work lately (boo!), but in the wake of my trip up to DjangoSki, there's a chance that we'll be doing a big project in Django soon (yay!). This is rather exciting, since I'm probably the best versed Python/Django person in the office, so I'd be working in more of a mentorship role rather than just a grunt programmer.

Then there's my new company: theChange.com. Bigger, meaner than a job, starting a business is exhausting work. I suppose that it wouldn't be so rough if you could build the company 9-5, Monday-Friday, but when you have to eat, it's a little more taxing. We have 3hour meetings now, twice a week, after I've been working for a previous 8, and we've broken down the "stuff to do" list into 5 (well, 4 now) week increments in preparation for our Big Public Launch in April. Annalea is super-hardcore, and an amazing person to work with... I just don't know if I have the energy some days.

Lastly, my father is working on a project of his own that he hopes will help my parents retire. It's a complex machine that requires, at the heart of it, a Sheevaplug running software I've written to handle talking to a PLC and magnetic card reader. It's some fun and crazy code, and so far, it's mostly worked... mostly.

Outside of the above, much of my former priorities are fading away. My involvement with the Greens has tapered off considerably, though that's due in large part to the absence of an election (or sitting government) for some time. My work with the VPSN pretty much died over the summer with our last cataloguing of the CCTV cameras in the city. I don't really miss the VPSN stuff, but my work with the Greens was really rewarding.

I suppose that somewhere in there, I'm supposed to find some personal time, but if I ever do, it always ends up being an evening of me wrestling with the fact that I could(should?) be working on our site. Mentally, I'm rather worn out of late.

And that's it for me. I'll do what I can to come up with something super-exciting for my next post. ...or maybe it'll be a lame meme. I haven't done one of those for a long time. Suggestions?

Blogs are part personal record, part external communication, and lately, due to my own over-capacity life, I've been neglecting it to the detriment of both these factors. I apologise for this, and there's a lot more I want to write about but I simply don't have the time lately.

I wanted to get one thing in though -- if only because it's been going on for some time without a public note and this is the kind of thing you want to write in a blog. So at the risk of sounding a little too much like the XKCD guy, I just wanted to record the fact that I've been dating this amazing girl for a few months now. She's smart, and pretty, and she smells really, really good :-)

That's all for now. Back to work!

A lot of interesting things have been happening lately that I've yet to document properly here. My apologies to those involved for falling behind, but as you'll see, I've been rather busy.

For starters, Melanie has finally moved to Vancouver. After months of preparation, fear and goodbyes, Mel packed her bags (and her two cats) and hopped on a plane to YVR. In the space of less than a week, she had 4 interviews for two jobs and it's very possible that she'll be offered one of said jobs today or tomorrow. The cats were comfortable in my place almost immediately, and I'm already beginning to notice the effects of Mayday's fur all over the place. (She's such a princess).

It's been a bit of a shock to Melanie so far. I don't think that it's completely sunk in that she's a Vancouverite now. I suggested that she "take the day off" today and wander through Stanley Park while the weather is still pretty. I hope she takes my advice.

Chrystal has also broken some rather big news: she's moving to Kandahar. You know, that place from where we keep shipping people home feet first? Of course she won't be serving in the military, rather she'll be working in the diplomatic office, on a military base, surrounded by big people with guns. This is a really exciting career move for her and she's been wanting something like this for a very long time. I can't say that I'm glad she's going, but I suppose I have to be happy that she's doing what she wants with her life.

Just come back alive ok?

As those of you who have been sending me occasional emails may have noticed, I've not been doing a very good job in replying to them. In fact, if you were to go back through this blog only a few months, I'm sure you'd find a few posts talking about how overwhelmed I am with stuff I have to do and specifically, emails to which I want to respond. The problem, at least as I've seen it, is that I just don't have enough hours in a day to get everything done. I work long hours, come home burnt and only wanting to veg out and do nothing... and even then I spend hours at home writing code for the office some nights.

Donat Group is a big fan of "work/life balance" a concept I'm familiar with, yet have not really taken advantage of lately. To remedy this though, I've decided to try something that may sound insane to some (hell, I'm not even a big fan of it): I'm going to schedule everything.

The plan is to schedule my work hours so I'm not inclined to stay as late as I usually do, then schedule making dinner and yes, even responding to all those emails. The theory being that if my laptop tells me that it's time for "x", it'll help me focus on the job at hand.

Maybe it's insane, but at the moment, I'm approaching desperation. Nothing in my life is working lately and frankly, I want my life back. I just wish my mind didn't keep drifting back to Seven of Nine scheduling "fun".

Email has been kicking my ass of late. By "kicking my ass", I mean of course that I have had, for far too long, far more email in my inbox marked "unread" than I can reasonably handle.

Among those senders yet to receive a response from me, there are: Annie, Heather, Kathryn, Amy, Margaret, Julie, Katie, Sheena and Roland. To all of you, I want to say that I'm sorry. I'll get to your email as soon as I can but most days, I look at that inbox (15 unread) plus my bloody Facebook inbox (12 unread) and I just can't bring myself to dive into it all. I appreciate the mail, really I do. Just please understand that if you haven't received a message yet, it's because I intend to write a real letter and I need to find the time and a clear head in which to do it.

At last, it would seem that I have a valid excuse for not writing here for so long: Melanie has been in town for just over a week.

The logic behind the whole situation of course was this: if she really was to move all the way to Vancouver, it makes sense that she might want to see what it's like before committing to the decision. She really couldn't have picked a better time. While it's sweltering and smoggy in Toronto, It's been a moderate 19°C here, low wind, and just a little rain.

As if the weather alone wasn't enough to convince her to move, I sold her on the thing BC's been flaunting for decades: the scenery. We rented a car and drove up to Kelowna through the rocky mountains. We took the scenic route, passing through dense forests and speeding through clouds. We saw waterfalls, lakes, rapids, and a few million tonnes of solid granite sticking out of the ground. Yeah, BC's pretty awesome... and I mean that in the literal sense: "worthy of awe".

I introduced Melanie to as many cool parts of Vancouver as I could, including my parents (in Kelowna), my grandparents and a number of my friends who made it out to my birthday shindig yesterday. We hit the Art Gallery, English Bay, The Marble Slab (w00t!) and even Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden in Chinatown that's always closed when I want to visit :-(. My brother got us free gondola tickets (thanks Butthead!) to Grouse Mountain (no Grouse Grind for us... next time.) and Melanie was super-brave and crossed the Capilano Suspension Bridge. We even got a tour of UBC by her Aunt and Uncle who work there.

We didn't get to everything of course. I would have liked to have found time to visit the VPL, Science World, and Granville Island, but I'm sure she'll lots of have time see that stuff when she moves here. That's right, the sales pitch worked. Melanie's moving to Vancouver. The plan is to be in town for January 2009 after a 1month trip to Melbourne, Australia to see her friend Amber (who is almost as awesome as BC).

Also for those of you wondering about the status of our relationship, you're probably not a Facebook addict yet (good for you!) Basically, we're together, though the logistics of two people being "together" with nearly 4000km between them is a bit daunting. I'll just go with what she said in her blog post: FUCK YOU DISTANCE! :-P

So yeah. It's been a long, busy week and now that my "vacation" is over, I have about 16hours before I'm back at work. Sometime... sometime soon I hope, I'll take a break ;-)

I met my super-big high school crush for drinks tonight to celebrate her birthday. I was nervous and self conscious in the moments leading up to and during the party, but I'm really glad I was able to do it. That girl used to have such power over me... now she's just a girl.

A smokin' hot girl with a million dollar smile, but still, just a girl.

I feel like I could conquer a small country tonight.

Yesterday evening, a short time after the press release chaos and the following strategy meeting I had in preparation for tomorrows TPSB consultation, I had something of an epiphany that I would like to share.

You see, after all of the above, I was vibrating... Stress had overwhelmed me and I didn't want to think -- no, I couldn't think about anything related to the events of the past 24hours. And so, I went for a walk. In the frozen cold, snow floating down from the sky, I walked from St. George station all the way to Yonge and Bloor... and that's when I realised.

It started with me trying to flush out all the stressful thoughts from my brain. I was walking down Bloor, getting wound up about future responsibilities, work to do, etc and I found myself consciously trying to make those thoughts "go away". It took some effort, but with the help of a Farbucks hot chocolate and ginger cookie, and a long walk in the snow, I managed just that. And by the time I reached Yonge & Bloor station, I was no longer thinking about anything stressfull.

But then, on the ride home, I started trying to ease myself back into what was up next and that's where I noticed it: I couldn't remember. Nothing was coming to mind. Who was I supposed to email next? What was in my inbox? What jobs were left for the evening? Nothing remained. It was like I knew I had something to do, but the actual work had been erased from my memory.

Now, given the current state of my memory, I'm thinking that is quite common for me, except that it's probably on a subconscious level. I forget things because part of me can't handle the stress of remembering it, and so, the memory disappears...

After my last post, I decided to take the night off. Colin suggested a full vacation but given that that wasn't an option at the moment, his secondary solution was to turn off the phone and remove myself from my life for a while. I can't say that this "fixed" me 100%, but I'm definitely feeling better today. I even went through my mountain of emails and those I didn't respond to, I at least marked as "read" so they won't be hanging over me anymore.

The plan, (at the moment at least) is to lay off the unnecessary things. No more tv (downloaded or otherwise) and to force myself to have at least 2 nights a week where I turn off my phone and vacate my life for a while. It's not much, but it's the best I can manage at this point.

I'll post more as I wade through this.

A blog is about you. Originally, these things were invented as a sort of personal reflection place, a diary of sorts. I never really intended my blog to be like that, but in a case like this, I'm not sure where else I work this stuff out.

Stress is getting in the way of my personal life. Normally, I'm a laid-back kind of person, but lately, with the TPSC, the new job and Melanie happening, I've found myself continuously exhausted.

It's important to note that the use of the word "exhausted" here is not meant to mean "sleepy". Rather, I'm burning out. The thought of going back through my email to answer the 12 or so people who are waiting on me literally makes me queezy. I can't focus on anything it seems and I think my personal life is deteriorating as a result.

I just need... rest.