joker.iki.fi

It’s been an interesting 2009 so far. With my daughter learning to walk and the new job and lots of travelling, every day has been very busy. I would like to take it easy for a change. I fear that there’s no more time available to take it easy - but I will certainly try to organize my time better and concentrate to the things that deserve the most time.

One such thing is friends. It’s been so awfully difficult to find time to meet even the closest ones. It’s not entirely my fault since they are quite busy too, but having a small child and hectic work is not helping at all. It’s easier to meet those friends with children since they typically have similar schedules, but again, having the kids around makes it more difficult to really be together. There’s always interruptions and things to organize and take care of. I have started to feel quite lonely lately, so I will definitely need to do something about this soon. And the fact is still that it’s so damn difficult to make friends that keeping the existing ones should be a priority.

Another such things is peace of mind. I find myself constantly worrying about things that I really don’t have that much control over. I won’t give you examples since those are too personal to be shared in the internet. But nowadays I spend a good part of the day working and taking care of things that I must to do. Things such as shopping for food and clothes, cleaning the house, helping others with their things, maintaining myself in a good shape and generally just trying to manage. During the free time I have, I spend way too much time worrying over things. This needs to stop since it really really makes my life shitty to say at least. I just need to find a way to actively concentrate on things that I can solve and simply drop the rest.

And finally the third topic is work. I will not take it so seriously anymore. This meaning that I will keep demaning that work is done in a sane way and properly and not with the constant fear of failure. The explanation that I hear everywhere: “We’re constantly suboptimizing, doing things in a crazy way and generally acting like  a scared bunch of rabbits because OMG there’s a recession” has at times caught me too. This will change. The recession, when I look at it, seems just like a scam to keep people scared and push them to do even more unpaid overtime and give up benefits and job satisfaction. I have never been paid more or gotten more attractive headhunting attempts than during this so called recession. I don’t know anyone whose job would be in danger because of the so called recession (that being the real reason) or would be unemployed because of the recession. The prices are just the same as before, the people keep buying and selling just as before and everything else, when looking through my eyes, seems JUST AS BEFORE. So, from now on, I make a holy promise to do the work the best I can and actively keep improving the way the work is done because just grinding teeth and pushing overtime is not working out too nicely. For anyone.

Spring is a time of renewal. I’m not entirely sure what this means for a thirty-years-old working nerd father, but I’m extremely certain that I’m off balance. The kind of balance I’m talking about is that of body and mind. Currently they are closing to a divorce, yet both longing for each other but not finding the time to meet and talk things through.

I raise a toast to body and mind and hope you both successful spring!

It’s been a hectic beginning of 2009. Today we are celebrating my daughter’s first birthday. Also, I have signed a contract with new employer which looks like it’s going to be an excellent opportunity.

Although everything is well, everyone is healthy and the recession doesn’t seem to hit me at least yet, I have to say I’m bit sad. Sad and in need of vacation.

I’m sad because I’m leaving a really good company and people behind. I’m sad because I haven’t had that much contact with my good friends because of the hectic schedule. I’m also a bit sad that I don’t really have that much time to spend with my family.

All of my time goes into stuff that doesn’t really make me happy. Cleaning the house, repairing the house, constant ‘gotta do’ shopping for shit that I’m not sure we actually need.

I hope that with the new job, upcoming summer and my wife’s school ending I finally get into a situation where I can enjoy the fruits of all this labor. Life just can’t be this fucking hard constantly.

On a positive note, I have finally found a good RPG, in Ultima-style, for my Playstation 3. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion shows real promise. I’ve been somewhat disappointed to the RPG offerings for the PS3, but this is really nice.

I have also kept a small break from bicycling. I’m really waiting for better weathers and some additional motivation to start this year’s training.

That’s pretty much it. I love you all.

This week has been interesting. I have been accomplishing quite a lot and yet somehow I feel empty.

At work I finally managed to pull off one thing that I’ve been working on for quite a long time now. This, once it gets going, should result in more interesting work and hopefully some monetary extra.

On freetime, I have managed to do sports five times this week (counting only sessions lasting more than an hour). This is a bit more than my usual average, and feels great. Also, we managed to do some serious filming again with NUD on wednesday and some editing on saturday. This was a very productive and enjoyable week on the freetime sector.

During the weekend I only drank a few beers and watched some movies with my wife. Again, quite enjoyable. The thing that makes me feel empty though is this: I am now concretely hitting the mark where I just don’t have any more energy left to do anything else. Really. If my boss would ask me to work some extra time or I would try to fit in another excercise to my schedule, or perhaps would manage to see more friends, it would most likely result in stress rather than better feelings.

It’s a vicious circle really. To have it good like I would argue that I have now, it takes effort. This effort is very close to the maximum capacity that I have. This situation leads very easily to questions such as:

• If I fall ill or some accident happens, what then?
• Is this really all there is to this life?
• Am I doing the right things?
• In case I am, am I doing those in correct order?

I am not the kind of person who would easily admit that I maybe have problems. Period. I am the kind of person who rather takes a problem and solves it. I am so sick of hearing people complain and rant about things being wrong. Go and fix the ones you can and forget the ones that you can’t fix!

But then again. If I myself can’t stretch to more accomplishment anymore, what then? I guess I’ll have to think about the current situation really thoroughly. Sleep over it and soforth, it typically gets better over time.