Coldfinger

In which our Hero doesn’t really want to work on closing out his requirements document for some reason

Well crap, I can’t find the list of ideas of things I wanted to talk about and I can’t think of anything particularly interesting that’s happened to me lately. Life’s been a little… I dunno. Not unpleasant or boring, I mean, stuff is happening, but I don’t feel like there’s been particularly new ground of late. I’m anti-social, I’m stressed and harried. I’m not doing anything about it, as is the recommended track for middle-aged men.

Relief is just a few weeks away, though. My contract goes to the end of the year but there’s a cap on how much I can work which will fall well before that. As a contractor who gets renewed year-to-year, I feel especially sensitive to the fact that I’m 30 days from zero-income. I have the savings to survive, but given that I have a job and the income from that job is directly tied to the work I put in, I feel something of an obligation to maximize that income. Make hay while the sun shines, right? So following my policy of not taking days off unless I had something better to do than just playing a video game at home, I worked through the year and when I reached my cap, the client extended my limit because they needed me.

They waited, of course. Long enough that I was getting excited about the down time, long enough for me to disappointed to give it up, but they bought another two weeks of my time and I still got two weeks off. This year, with the project turbulence and the political winds at the client, it’s a safe bet that I’ll get December to myself and this time even if they want me, I’m not inclined to take it. The downtime will be healthy for me.

In the meantime, the mission is to destress. The death-march project is done, and as we lay it to rest that whole pent up frustration will hopefully start to soak out of me. So what’s left is the ongoing frustration with the people here. I stopped to think about it and I passed a milestone a long time ago, in that this client is the longest posting I’ve ever had, 12 years with some short gaps. Twelve years. By next year this will be my longest continuous gig. (sigh)

It’s definitely time to get my resume updated. I’ve been dabbling at it for a while but now it’s clearly becoming a priority. It’ll be nice to have some time to dabble. Just need a plan for how to focus myself.

Very strange to be writing here again. Here as in the place where I always write, so no, I haven’t been playing elsewhere. I’ve just been really kind of closed up lately. Not a lot to say in the first place and my tension level has left me unfocused. There was a time where I could write entries while watching a movie and listening to a separate movie track. Now… now I struggle to think of what to talk about. If the Diarymaster would get off his butt and actually *fix* the performance issues, then I could at least search back to the last time people asked questions. Maybe I’ll go find a topic suggest-a-majig.

What I really want to do these days, however, is get back to drawing. I’m surprised to miss that.

My hands are cold. But I just ate lunch. It makes me wonder if this isn’t some kind of issue. Or is it just that I just ate lunch?

Brr