Been a little bit since I posted. Largely, because there’s probably nothing all that interesting going on to be worthwhile. I had a bit of post-euphoria funk, but that appears to have been dealt with.
Weirdly, one of the realizations to come from that funk is actually that I think I need some relatively regular “me time.” Whether that would be just getting out of the house with the dog for a few hours, or some time in the house alone, for some reason, recently, I’ve felt really … crowded. And it’s not like I’m seeing more people or anything, with the exception of that prior to a few weeks ago, I worked relatively alone, and now I interact with people pretty regularly. Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just created a need for me to be able to make some distance between myself and everyone else.
One of the other things that’s been clear is that relationships are indeed work, and since Ei-Nyung and I aren’t commuting anymore, we really do need to make some time to spend together, whether this is doing stuff, or just discussing our days, or what have you. Time we used to take for granted isn’t there anymore, now that we’re not trapped in a car for two hours a day together with essentially nothing else to do. It’s work, but it’s not like it’s work I don’t enjoy, I just have to remember that it’s something we have to do.
The weekend was pretty productive. On top of finally really knocking down some weeding we’d been neglecting, we cooked dinner, and had leftovers (sorry, no pictures). Orange chicken, from Cook’s Illustrated. It’s a spectacular recipe – distinctly orangey, not cloyingly sweet or overbattered. We ran out of cornstarch about 3/4 of the way through (the batter is a dip in egg whites, and a dip into cornstarch), but the mochiko flour we had for Lindsi’s Mochiko Chicken recipe finished out the batch. Of course, now we have no cornstarch, and no mochiko flour, so next time we’re at the supermarket, that’ll be something to keep in mind.
Had breakfast at Merritt with Klay & Ei-Nyung, which was (as always) a really good time.
Yesterday, I spend $150 on clothes, which is pretty unusual for me. Got a pair of black slacks, a black & grey striped Calvin Klein shirt (the best of the haul), and two more button-down shirts – one a deep red, the other a light beige. Then, a brown belt (the previous belt broke), a slightly metallic dark brown/beige tie, and a bottle of conditioner. Yeah, it’s weird. Leave me alone. Like I said in a previous post, there’s something really weird about working in an uber-casual environment all the time. I figure my dad rebelled against my grandfather’s always-on formality by being always-off (formality-wise is all I mean). Maybe it’s my job to broker a balance between the two. Casual sometimes, more dressed up sometimes. Maybe it’ll be completely random.
Listening to Ok Go right now. It’s a surprisingly good album, for something I picked up because they were dancing on treadmills. Sort of rekindled some desire for rock, which I’d been sort of lacking since what, maybe Green Day’s American Idiot. Been picking up a little more music, since I got some good headphones, and was looking for some isolation from peoples. That came in the form of two Fischerspooner albums (both awesome), Ok Go (as above, good), The Faint (aside from about three songs, unremarkable), Gnarls Barkley (good, but largely not my style – Crazy’s an incredibly catchy song, though – that, and ‘Just a Thought’ made the purchase worthwhile).
If iTunes would let you apply the $1.00 you spent on a single towards the purchase of the rest of the album, I bet their album sales would substantially increase. Same with their single sales. One of the big things that keeps me from buying a whole crapload of singles is that if I like it, what then? I’m essentially out a buck, as I’d likely buy the whole album, and end up with two copies of the same song. As a result, I tend to only buy singles from albums where the album isn’t any cheaper than buying the songs individually.
Work’s fun. I know I’ve said that I’m looking for some isolation, but that’s just a personal quirk. I’m actually really enjoying it on a day-to-day basis, in part because the guy I’m working with now, I really like working with. We’ve got a pretty easygoing, jokey atmosphere, which I remember now that we had back when we worked together at Maxis. It’s good to have someone at work whose humor matches yours. There were a fistful of people I loved working with at Maxis for that very reason, but hadn’t found that at the new place yet.
Another thing that’s good is that I “won” one of my company’s games through a trivia contest, and it’s actually really good. It’s a licensed IP, and it’s essentially a port of a game that came out on a different platform, but it’s really well done. It’s nice to actually really enjoy something my coworkers have worked on, becuase one of this company’s flagship games I absolutely despised, and the sequel, IMO, doesn’t look to have fixed most of the problems. As a result, I’d had a bit of trouble feeling good about the company I’m working for, but this at least goes some way towards readjusting my internal impression of the studio.
Still…
What’s the saying? “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
That step happens next week. I’m really, really looking forward to it.
“me time”: I think this is a greatly undervalued concept for a lot of people. I know I need tons of it and if I don’t get it, I start to get antsy and go a little over the edge, and not in a good way. Rest assured that I’m not going to mistake it for “don’t want you around” time and get offended. 😀
Relationship work: Yeah, we’ve both been noticing that we don’t really know what’s going on with the other person. It used to be that by the time we got home, we had shared about & destressed from work and could jump right into a little “me” time followed by some time together. Now, we have neither enough “me” time nor sharing time. So yeah, to conjure up those two hours from thin air will take some work… :-/
Home productivity: Yup! We sure got a lot done. It was nice. You didn’t mention it, but we made progress on our finances too. 🙂
Chicken: Delicious. Just had it for lunch. It stays crispy for an amazingly long time, but unfortunately was soggy today. But still damn tasty. Next time, even more cayenne pepper! 😀
Merritt: Fun.
Clothes: Me too. I also spent about $150 on clothes: one shirt and two skirts to wear to the various weddings and nice dinners next month. All the pieces are on the plain Jane side, but at least I’ll have clothes that don’t look either juvenile and/or inappropriate.
Food for ears: It’s all about the podcasts right now.
Work: That is fantastic.
I think the rss feed of your blog might be broken. Boo.
I hear you about relationships needing work. With so many hours commited to work and other duties, it can take some creativity to find those moments to be together. What works for me is to embrace the small chunks of ‘found time’ whenever and however they present themselves, and spend them fully engaged with my partner. One or both hands on them, eyes fully focused on their face, really listening and being heard. We could be talking about movies or serious plans for the future, it doesn’t matter. Just feeling really connected on a daily basis is a great grounding stone.
And I also hear you about the ‘me’ time. Without that, I start to unravel. Commuting exclusively by train now helps tremendously, though my sleep schedule is suffering.
I changed it a while ago for Seppo to use https://helava.com/helava.xml. It used to be in a subdirectory. I hope you aren’t subbed to the old place. 😐 I find that blogger is sort of hit and miss with the feeds — sometimes, it updates the feed right away (changing the file when I do a publish), and sometimes, it takes a while. My guess is that sometimes, it just has some issues connecting to our server and doesn’t write the file.
Nope, I have the right rss feed url. :/
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