As the holidays rapidly approach and the schedule for my project at work continues to fold in upon itself (in ways I thought only a Guild navigator could possibly accomplish), I realize that there really just isn’t enough time in the day.

At work, I spend the first half of my day in a conference room with three to five other developers, where I can’t get any work done because the sole purpose of me being there is to answer questions. The second half of my day is spent trying to regain composure from the first half of the day, remember where I was in the middle of the project, and try to do a full day’s worth of work in half a day. I’m in the 50 - 60 hour week range, and it’s just the beginning of the project.

At home, I get an average of four nights out of seven every week when I can potentially relax. The hockey season is well under way, which means those other three nights are hockey games which start at 7:00p and end at 10:00p, but it takes an hour to get there (rush hour) and half an hour to get back, so the real time allocated is 6:00p - 10:30p, and that’s if there’s no overtime.

On my nights to relax, I’m torn: There are so many projects I’ve got going that I’d like to work on, but I’m brain-dead from my day at work and I’m not motivated to do more when I get home.

Ugh.

I’ve got the last two weeks of the year off (assuming that doesn’t get canceled for me because the project’s behind), and I can’t wait. I know I just took a week off last month, but man, I’m feeling the need to decompress here.

Hockey game tonight, then the next one is next Friday… then one that Saturday, too… But that still gives me a week off.

Sort of a side note: I just now made some iced tea here at work. They were out of plain black tea, so I picked Earl Grey - scented black tea.

Earl Grey does NOT make good iced tea.