Entering Winter '10

The leaves are finally falling from the trees and the barren winter landscape is presenting itself.  With snow certainly right around the corner I've found myself looking to hibernation.  Couple hibernation and my own personal bubble of relaxation. 

It's not hard to find time to really enjoy downtime now that I'm working again.  I forgot how much work, any work, took out of you.  It's a great feeling to have your personal time after spending so long doing a monotonous job.  Work is a draining experience, even if all you're doing is performing my simple duties.  I wonder if it's different when you enjoy your job?  I'll figure that out one day.  For now though I'm finding myself coveting the down time between my working hours.  I still have many, many free hours and days a week but somehow it's different than before.

Tonight, for example, I got into my fantastic grey robe and put on some DuckTales.  This was absolutely divine.  Simple, sure.  Fulfilling, definitely.  Throw some coffee into the mix, maybe some internet time and some quality time with Ashes and that's a day well wasted.  Am I finding it harder to be productive?  A little bit, but my mind is actually feeling a bit more focused.  And relaxed.  That's important to me at this point since I work much better when I'm relaxed and focused.  After this holiday season is over I might be able to use that to get something done in terms of my life.  For now I'm going to stick with coffee, the robe and some quality entertainment.

While unemployed it was nothing but "free" time.  That was actually a very, very bad thing.  My mind was all over the place while I was unemployed.  I struggled to keep focused on any one thing and instead started taking on too many projects at once.  This left most of them in bits and pieces, and none of them anywhere near completed.  Ideas are fine but at some point they have to become material.  I was also feeling lazy and lethargic as opposed to relaxed.  That is the best I could hope for and was quite detrimental.  I'm finding it much easier to focus on single tasks and start getting stuff done.  Managing my own schedule with nothing else going on isn't my strong suit I guess.

Now that winter is around the corner our trips around the area are decreasing and Ashes and I are becoming more sedentary.  We are entering, to steal a phrase from HIMYM, "couple hibernation".  That would probably be more appropriate if we had any friends to hibernate from, but nonetheless we're sitting around enjoying our cave.  Marathoning TV shows has become something of a habit around here these days.  Now that the weathers colder we have to find our relaxation indoors.  Winter is right around the corner and it's time to hunker down.

We've actually got a pretty sweet set up in our two basement rooms.  It isn't the most glamorous place to live, and certainly I wish we lived some place better.  At this point in my life I thought I'd be doing better.  But we certainly are comfortable and that's what matters.  It's time to hibernate and our basement cave isn't such a bad place to do it.