Holiday Vacation/End of 2006

I was able to get the week off between Christmas and New Year's Day this year, which is no small feat at my job, since everyone I work with has been at the company a long time and has vacation time to burn. The process of getting vacation time around the holidays is especially competitive. So, I'll make a few comments about the last week or so.

There's a lot more I'd like to have done, as usual. I have some friends I rarely see unless I take vacation time, and didn't see as many of them as I'd like. I didn't accomplish as much around the house as I'd wanted to. On the other hand, I've been absolutely burned out lately due to personal and professional stresses, so it's not altogether surprising that I crashed to the degree that I did, and simply rested much of the week.

I'll be spending far too much time in the near future with my new X-Box games. I'd only had three games before Christmas, including the racing game that came with it. Christmas doubled that total, and I've already spent too much time with the World Poker Tour game. On the other hand, I'm already a much better poker player now than I was a week ago. :-) I also have a DVD conversion kit now for the X-Box, which allows me to watch movies in bed. Very dangerous luxury, especially after I subscribe to Netflix!

I accomplished one goal, in that I finally got back to "A Slice of Blackwoods" and completed the setting summary handout for the players. Now it's just a matter of getting the GURPS Character Assistant running and making the actual character sheets. After that, all that needs to be done is a few refinements and a playtest to smooth off the rough edges, then I'll move on to completing "A Dance of Pairs" for Sorceror.

I've done a lot of spiritual reading toward the end of this year, including a wonderful book on Buddhism. I don't think I'm ready to actually become a Buddhist, but there are a lot of valuable ideas there. Hopefully I can take some of that to work with me and get my working year off to a calmer start than 2006.

My nephew has taken up my old musical instrument, the bass guitar. I'd been missing my old musical activities lately anyway, and digging out some of my old equipment to lend him has cranked up my longing even further. I don't have the time to invest in getting back into a band again, but I'd love to get together with some decent musicians once a month or so to have some fun and scratch the old itch. The problem would be finding people with exactly the same level of commitment, a modicum of actual talent, and reasonable similar musical tastes. I just don't see any way for that to happen, so the itch will probably have to go unscratched. Still, I think I'll get the bass back out more often this upcoming year, which wouldn't be hard since it's only been an annual event for the last several years.

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions, since they have a way of falling apart even before the end of January. That said, I'd like to do a better job in 2007 of addressing practical matters around the house. I'd like to be calmer at work. I'd like to do more creative writing. All of this boils down to better control of my time, and I believe the key to that is not getting as stressed out at work, since I think that the main reason I'm not more productive at home is that when I have a bad day (which happens all too often), I'm more inclined to indulge myself than to do something productive. 2006 has been a particularly stressful year, even by my usual high stress standards. Here's hoping 2007 is at least a little easier!