Father and Daughter, Sunset at Centennial Park Sydney Australia by Alex E. Proimos on Flickr

I have the best job in the world.

Yesterday, I walked through a NASA building, looking at mockups and presentations about the Curiosity rover. I snapped pictures of the actual SAM module that will sit on Mars a year from now. I returned to my office just in time for a teleconference with a large consumer electronics firm about a Goddard technology that they want to license. Just another day at the office.

Ironically, at lunch I attended a brown-bag session held by my company about reducing workplace stress. Stress is a daily fact of life at my job. I work at a dynamic, fast-paced, public-facing place. I expect stress.

Fortunately, the workplace stress reduction presentation agreed with my approach: stress (a maddeningly vague term, by the way) simply exists, and we must develop approaches to handle it. The advice ranged from taking breaks to reading poetry aloud.

Stress is the price I pay for an interesting job. Won’t complain.

And my stress is actually decreasing. Now that I’m down to two classes per week–and this upcoming week is a holiday week, meaning no classes at all–I now have a reasonable amount of time for both personal projects and decompression at home. Last night, for the first time in several weeks, I was able to read for pleasure.

Today: maintenance projects at work, and role-playing in the evening (playing Deadlands). This weekend: a relatively quiet Saturday, followed by get-togethers on Sunday. Perfect.

Yesterday, I launched StreamSuki, an index of free, legal, English-language streams of Japanese animation.

I spent many long hours building it, and I’m not sure why. I was downright obsessed with the technical implementation. I wanted to get it right, and to launch it. I did so at the expense of other, more pressing matters (like, er, keeping my house clean).

It turned into a pretty big project. It automatically indexes 9 different sites, parsing thousands of lines of code for the tell-tale markers of individual anime series or episodes. It builds and maintains a database of over 19,000 records, referencing well over 500 different works of anime.

I wrote code and I tested and I rewrote code and I restructured the database until eventually it really, really worked. This just consumed hours and hours of my time, but I was absolutely captivated by it. Sucked in. I’d lay in bed, trying to go to sleep, and go over parsing problems in my head.

For better or worse, the outcome is a complete, working site that I think will be of use to people. I’m glad for that, but I have to wonder a bit at my behavior. Why was I so obsessed?

As I mentioned on Twitter, I’m pushing through a punishing schedule. I teach on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings, and I was out supporting a conference for work last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Combine this with a few social obligations, and for the past week I’ve been home almost exclusively to sleep. I leave the house at 7:00am and return at 9:00pm.

One perverse advantage: the dishes don’t pile up, because I never eat at home.

Granted, I signed up for all of this on some level. Nobody’s forcing me to teach. But I’ve been on a treadmill for the past week and a half. I’m also trying to keep up with Otaku, No Video, which means three videos a week plus the multi-hour live news show. In addition to assembling materials for classes. And, er, working full-time at a demanding (and incredibly cool) job.

So. Yes. I’m tired. If I’ve been negligent in replying to an email or returning a phone call, my apologies. I’m doing my best to keep up.