I feel like I should be doing something.  Something…more.  I’m not talking about anything on a grand scale.  I just feel, right now, like I spend far too much of my time sitting idle.  Much of this is fueled by the fact that I work from home and spend most of my off-hours entertaining myself in front of my computer.  The upshot of this is that I probably spend 3/4 of my life sitting in the same chair starting at the same two screens.

So much so that, the other night, when I announced to the family at large that I was going to go out to Starbucks to grab a cup of coffee because I felt the need to just get out of the house I was met with bewilderment.  Alex ended up going with me and asked, in the car, if I had wanted to talk to him privately about something.  They couldn’t seem to grasp that there wasn’t any kind of ulterior motive to my actions.  I, quite literally, just wanted to be out of the house.  When compared to my normal activities this was something strange and unusual.

The fact that my patterns are so predictable and stagnant that the simple act of wanting to step out for an hour to grab a cup of coffee is unusual causes me some distress, my friends.

What’s more, they aren’t alone in this.  I myself have gotten to the point where things that are outside of my normal array of activity are seen as being bothersome.  I’ve started to get resentful of any time I’m asked to leave the house when I’m not expecting to, and only part of that is due to the fact that gas is so expensive.  I make decent money.  I can afford gas.  It shouldn’t be an issue if for some reason I need to go somewhere I hadn’t been planning on going, but when confronted with a situation like that I tend to get cranky. 

This lack of doing anything other than sitting at the keyboard is not limited to activities outside of the household, either.  I don’t do nearly as much around HERE any more, either.  I don’t cook or clean as much.  Home improvement projects take forever or never happen.  Yard work is sporadic at best, with things usually needing to get to a critical mass before I do anything about them.  I want to do something different with my web site, but the amount of effort required to do so simply puts me off from even starting. 

A lot of this can be attributed to the time I spend playing World of Warcraft.  I’m aware of that.  Frankly, though, my apathy and lack of inertia bleeds over into that arena as well.  I’m exceedingly bored with the current level of content we can access in our guild, and the new stuff that we’re moving in to really doesn’t excite me all that much either.   Running the guild for as long as I have has taken a toll on meas well, and I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve dealt with so much drama and bullshit that I instantly assume the worst whenever I face some sort of possible “controversy.”   As proud of I am of where the guild is and what we’ve managed to achieve, there are many times when I miss not having to juggle 100 people and their schedules, personalities, and attitudes.

Work is…work.  Again, very stagnant right now.  We’ve got a few major projects coming up but they are all in the planning stages right now and I find myself sitting around waiting for “permission” to start on projects and subsequently doing nothing.  We’ve gotten all official with Project Managers and outlines and charters and sign offs and meetings and I spend most of my time wondering if I’m even supposed to be working on something.  In the past if someone wanted me to do something and I had the time to do it I just DID IT.  Now I have to tell them they need to submit a project request and they have to wait for it to be talked to death and approved before I can even start.

It’s not very effective.  I realize it COULD be and that transition periods like the one we are going through are always painful, but that factors in pretty heavily in the “spinning my wheels” feelings I’m having right now.

I was hoping to be involved in a show or two soon, but it looks like I probably won’t be until the beginning of next year at the earliest (if at all).  I could go out for something with another company, but the fact is that finances do factor into THAT equation.  With the amount of money I spend on gas to do a show and the amount of time it takes away from my family I have to be able to turn some kind of profit in order to justify it.  I know I’m supposed to be an artist and all and that I should get satisfaction out of just being a performer, but the bottom line is the bottom line.

I’ve had a really hard time getting back into the exercise groove.  I haven’t stopped completely, but I really have to push myself to do my workouts on the days I do them.  Maya asks me how I’m feeling and I almost always tell her “You’re lucky I’m here.”  I’m back up over 250 again and currently sitting at 256, having managed to get down to 248 right after Rosencrantz and Guildenstern finished. 

Healthy living requires motivation.  I think the tone of this post makes it pretty clear I have none.  Want and need to quit smoking again, but can’t muster enough “care” up to do that either.

So yeah, that’s where I’m at right now.  Maybe it’s just a phase I’ll shake off, or maybe I need to make some big changes in my life.  Maybe I just need to turn off the damn computer more.

I’m just not sure.