The bloom is off the rose. As of today, I’m officially tired of my vacation from all media.

But that’s good, actually. That’s an opportunity for me to examine my reaction and figure out what that means. Why am I tired? Why do I want more input?

Here’s what I figure so far: I like to learn and I like to teach. Those are pretty intrinsic to my nature; I’ve been doing both, happily, for many years now. When I’m separated from all media inputs, I can’t learn. That goes against my nature, so it’s not fun.

On the other hand, the first half of this week has shown me that a lack of input can give me a huge amount of focus. I’ve been much less scatter-brained this past week than I usually am. So, clearly, cutting back on media has been helpful. The question is, how much should I cut back?

At this point, I know that I want to cut back on the amount of media I take in each week. I’m planning to establish a budget on media each week: no more than five hours of DVD watching, for example. If I break these limits, nothing will happen; the point is to have a visible limit, so I know when I’m consuming more input than I had planned to.

I’ll see how that goes once I’m back to normal this Saturday. Though I won’t really be “back to normal” until next Monday, since I’ll have a pretty busy Saturday (Otherspace meeting, plus hosting my parents for New Year’s Eve) and Sunday (parents staying through New Year’s Day, and possibly role-playing that evening).

(A few side observations: I haven’t missed the web at all. I have missed e-mail, and I think I didn’t need to eliminate that. I would have benefitted from more contact with people, not less.)

Gee. Everyone’s staying away from their blogs this week, it seems, except me. And I’m the one avoiding media, so I should have the least to talk about. Instead, I feel like blogging. Hmmm. That’s causing a few neurons to fire.

The media avoidance has made me realize just how media-saturated I am. Well, and it’s not just media; it’s raw input. I have a lot of stuff pouring into my brain at any given moment. Imagine this scenario: I’m in line at a coffee house. I’m thinking about what to order. In front of me hangs a huge menu of choices, and each choice is competing for my attention. Pop songs are playing loudly enough for me to understand the lyrics above the din of conversation. I’m smelling several different brews of coffee. That’s a lot of input.

I come home and I have DVDs to watch, magazines to read, mail to sort, e-mail to answer, and possums on my back fence. No, really:

This little guy sat on top of my back porch all Monday morning. After a cold snap last week, we’ve had warm weather recently, which has thawed out several inches of snow. I suspect my little friend’s burrow flooded, so he was spending the morning drying himself out and waiting for his burrow to dry out. Poor thing. Totally unafraid of me, though; let me get right up next to him and didn’t even bat an eye.

I guess that’s what comes of less media input; I notice things like this.

Had a good Christmas. It was “just” me and my parents, but that was plenty. Which sounds like a snarky put-down; it’s not. A weekend with my parents is joy. I love every opportunity I have to spend time with them. I wish I had more time to spend with them…though on the other hand, I have to balance that desire with an understand that I have to live my own life.

In any event, nothing of major import has occured lately; the major news of the moment is this: My one-week vacation from all media has begun.

What does that mean? No TV. No movies. No DVDs. No newspapers. No magazines. No radio. No books. No web. None of it, at all, until the weekend.

Have I been completely, totally faithful? Well, no. I watched quite a few episodes of Good Eats today. But it’s the principle of the thing, and it’s made me really think about the amount of media that I let into my life. Without it, I have all sorts of time. And I have to ask myself: Is it all worth the time I put into it? What do I get out of the local paper? What do I get out of the latest blockbuster movie?

Which is not a rhetorical question. I do learn and benefit from those things. But at what cost?

So. This webserver died a few days ago, which is why I haven’t been updating recently. I’d explain, but I don’t want to risk the ire of my current hosting company. Suffice to say I’m less than thrilled with their service.

Though it was kind of nice to be away from e-mail for a while. I sure had a good bit more time for other things. Such as ”liming.”

“Liming” is a term used by some Caribbean population to refer to their night-time parties. See, each morning, they’d show up for work bright, energetic, and happy. They’ll work hard throughout the day, then at the end of the day they stop and party all evening and well into the night. Then they repeat this every day. Foreigners were amazed that they could keep up the pace.

The natives explained that, when the ships from the Old World came, the sailors were always sick from scurvy…until one ship came with lively sailors who had brought limes to punch up their cuisine. And of course, the citrus in the limes prevented scurvy. The Caribbeans adopted the word to describe their own practice of allowing “the spice of life” to completely consume you while you’re off work. Of completely recharging every single day.

So I’ve been “liming.” Yesterday, that meant going to my parents’ house for dinner and staying until well into the night, eating and talking and laughing at terrible old TV shows. Tonight, that will mean watching a lot of Good Eats, or otherwise just letting go.

Wish me luck.

Long, long, long week.

Mainly due to work. I have essentially two duties there. One required a lot of work this week, and the other required a ton of work this week, most of which culminated in a Friday spent almost despairing at my work load.

I got it done, pretty much. I still have some work left to do, but I turned the tide and acquitted myself with honor. But it wiped me out in the evenings, which explains why I haven’t been writing in this journal much this week.

The other reason for my silence is that I’ve been rather more silent lately. I’ve been thinking about myself, and observing my routines and habits. I’ve been asking myself a question: Who am I?

That may sound trite. To be more clear, I’ve been examining my actions. How do I sit when I talk to people? How long do I take to get out the door in the morning? How do I spend my money in a given week? And what does that say about me?

The old cliché says that actions speak louder than words. One of the problems with old clichés is that they’re usually true but misleading. More accurately, people see your actions and give them a lot of weight. Your actions are usually given much more weight than what you say.

Moreover, if you say one thing and do another, it’s the action that you truly believe in.

So I’ve been paying close attention to my actions, and noticing when my actions don’t match up to my beliefs. For example, when I talk to people, I like to ”zero in” on them, paying close attention. As I’ve paid attention to my actions, though, I’ve noticed that I tend to relax my body and sit/stand in a pose that signals uninterest. I lean back, put my hands behind my head, and so forth. This is because I’m trying to pay so close attention that I want my body as relaxed and uncomplaining as possible. But I’m sure it signals to other people that I’m not interested. So I’ve been changing my posture as I talk to people, and sure enough, they act more engaged when I talk to them.

So that’s a good thing.

Above is my Christmas tree for this year. Turned out quite nice, in my opinion. I gathered a small collection of eight or ten ornaments from my parents this year, and put up my first real tree. The ornaments look okay, actually; my fears that they would look scarce were unfounded. Instead, it looks…understated. Well, and the billions of candy cances help.

I’m getting back into development for Syllable Why? I like the community. I like the idea: an easy-to-use OS for home and small office users. I’m impressed at the scale of the goals; this is definitely a WOW! project. I like the possibilities. And I like to write code, so why not?

…except I’m the guy who always has too many irons in the fire. I already have half a dozen major projects in the works: the VR story, my young adult novel, Syllable.org itself, DAMmachines.com. Where will I find the time to write Syllable code?

Actually, I have an answer for that. I’m setting aside about an hour every day to work on a major project. Divided amongst these many projects, that’s not much time; some will only get an hour per week. But it’s some time, at least, and I can do a fair amount of work in that time. Worth a try.

It’s Monday, so I’m feeling fine. Wrote three pages in my paper journal this morning, slammed through my morning routine, took out the trash, and arrived at work fifteen minutes early. Had an easy day, taking care of a few things and talking to my boss. I felt like a professional. Just got home and slammed through half a dozen little chores.

I’m on top of the world.

Much like Jackie Chan in The Tuxedo, which I watched last night, as a very lame segue. I liked it more than I expected. It has some wirework, but less than I thought it would, and it had a tighter script than most Chan films. And it’s very nicely lit and filmed, which helps.

They needed a dapper British guy to play the gentleman that Jackie drives everywhere (and eventually takes the place of). So they got Lucius Malfoy. Almost impossible to watch without wanting to rip his eyeballs out for trying to kill Harry Potter. Ah well. He did a great job nevertheless.

I didn’t bake as many cookies as I’d hoped; I only have six batches complete now, which is four short of my goal. But then, my parents were here for most of the day; my Mom sewing curtains and my Dad cleaning up the grout in my little foyer for me, so I was spending a good amount of the day with them. Plus we went out to lunch.

Not that I’m complaining at all; we had a great time, and I’m always glad to have them over. I should be able to finish the cookies this week. In fact, I may be able to make two batches tomorrow, since I have two doughs sitting in the fridge.

Saturday was a bit more exciting; I had an Otherspace meeting. We’re making good progress on the DC Anime Club TV ad, but more importantly, I had a great time at the meeting. We were comfortable. We chatted and laughed and worked. It was exactly how I want this studio to be.

Woke up to a veritable winter wonderland, but one with a deadly secret (dum dum DUMMMM): the snowstorm ended with a finale of sleet, so the roads were like frozen ponds. As I journalled and sipped a cup of tea, I saw people carefully maneuvering their cars onto the roads, and decided to wait a little bit before heading to work. I’m glad I did; the day was comparatively warm, so that by the time I left, the roads were covered mostly with slush.

And there’s new VR story up. I’m not maintaining a large buffer of content, but I’m not sure if I need to; I’ve nearly finished the story. There’s probably less than two thousand words left to the VR story, which kinda amazes me because I’ve been writing it for two years now. Two years. And it should be over in a couple of months.

At which point, I want to completely rewrite it. But such is the nature of writing.

By the way, I didn’t bake any cookies today, despite having such an easy day. Spent quite a bit of time at home, but spent it working on online projects or goofing off watching MST3K. Oh well.

Woke up and felt like chewed bubblegum. Shot out an e-mail to folks at work, explaining how I felt and that I’d be in to work late. Not a problem; my calendar was clear today, and the program for which I’m responsible is hosting its customer today, so my ”bosses” would be plenty busy without me.

So I got an extra couple of hours of sleep, and woke up feeling refreshed for once. Zipped in to work and took care of a few things, then came home a little early to get started on my baking.

Thus begins Christmas Cookie season. As I’ve mentioned to practically all of my friends and acquaintances recently, I’ll be baking about ten different types of Christmas cookies this weekend. To start off, I’m baking some of the more difficult cookies each night leading up to Sunday, when I’ll roll up my sleeves and bake the rest.

Tonight’s challenge: Candy Cane Cookies. They’re two strands of dough, one white and one red, twisted into the shape of a candy cane. They look great, but they’re a pain to make. You have to make the dough—which is near the consistency of bread dough, quite tough—and twist it into the appropriate shapes, despite it falling apart, then bake it for quite a bit longer than the recipe calls for, then transfer the cookies to the baking sheets without moving them too much or they’ll fall apart.

I still have nine of them whole. :sigh: Ah well.