Taking a break from . . .

1. characterized by lack of development, advancement, or progressive movement: a stagnant economy.
2. inactive, sluggish, or dull.

See also: dormant, stale, lifeless

I make no bones about it - I am bored. No longer out of my skull, no longer at a point where I need to continue to bitch to everyone I know about it, but to a whole different level. Life, as we know it for me, is exactly as described above - stagnant. I'm not doing anything really much these days, and to some small extent, it may be driving me a little bit crazy. Just thinking about what I'm going to write about is hard enough, because life has been that boring, and wait for it; I don't ever like to go this long without at least one piece of writing in a month. (insert snide writing about number of writing folders slowly diminishing each year - including this one: 13)

It's not the end of the world, and believe it or not, there has been a few benefits to this stale lifestyle, but in terms of my overall happiness, it's something that I don't want to be doing forever, let alone the remainder of this year. I'm really not miserable by any stretch of the imagination, nor am I overtly unhappy; signs of depression might be misconstrued as signs of extreme boredom, but for the most part, it's not that bad.

So ever since I got back from Las Vegas the second time, life's pretty much been the following: work, gym, eat, sleep. Wash, rinse, repeat. In fact, I think I wrote these exact words in the last time I wrote, some time in July.

Work - I work a cool job. A lot of people would envy working where I do, and I am aware of that. But at the same time, it's not all fun and games, and at times like now, it turns out to be no different than any other corporate environment in America. The only chief difference is that here, I can wear t-shirts and jeans and sandals every day, and nobody cares. I get to watch cartoons, and play around "creatively exercising," and I like all the people I work with.

But I get the impression that they don't really need me here, based on the paltry workload. The things I do are interesting-enough projects, but often get tied up in the corporate process of legal teams, copywriters, and disputes, and despite the number of projects I've started, quite a good bit of them have been put on hiatus, or nixed due to people going on vacations, not covering bases, and/or other trite, corporate reasons. I sometimes feel that I'm kept around because the people that are my superiors are really nice people, and aren't necessarily very confrontational; and it's easier for them to have me around as a backup workhorse to relieve others than to go through the awkward process of having to let me go.

Regardless, it's a paycheck - and as much as it would be in the romantic-sense to walk away and chase after my traveling goals, I'm not going to do that necessarily. I'd be dumb to walk away from a relatively easy paycheck, especially in the way the world goes today. Safe over reckless in this case, because who knows what lies ahead, if I were no longer funded? Besides, I think everything will work itself out in the next two months anyway. Originally, I was brought on to help with trade shows and giant convention materials, but those have long passed, and they asked if I would stay the summer, to which here I stand. Technically, in the sense that students are already back in school, summer should be over, but perhaps they meant when it's no longer balls hot outside. I want to do some traveling come the end of August, all the way into October, and I don't know how they'd like having a sparsely-present freelancer. If they keep me, awesome, if not, no hard feelings - they knew that I was kind of a wanderer when they hired me on in the first place, and all parties can get satisfactory closure, hopefully.

Benefits to work - There is a gym on-site, to which I go to after work 3-4 times a week. I no longer pay Gold's Gym $41 a month to drive 28-miles round trip to workout, so now I get to work out, save time, gas, and sanity in the process.

I tend to cook more often lately, which results in occasional left-overs, which results in the next day's lunch. Which therefore results in not spending money on lunches, therefore saving me money.

Recent gripe - a friend who also works in the same building once told me that during the summer, he could roll out of his house, get coffee, breakfast, and still be at work on time. But during the school year, everything inexplicably took longer, and was a struggle to commute. I'm finding this exact scenario out, first hand, as it's become that time of the year in which the little chiddlins' are going back to school. The roads are congested, even at the asinine early time in which I leave the house, and there is a lot more highway traffic during my morning commute. The electronic sign that normally says "Downtown Atlanta, 7 miles, est. 9-11 minutes" is now stating travel times of 20-24 minutes since the start of this week. I have less time to get my coffee, let alone sit down to unwind prior to going into work, and I'm finding myself not only unwound, but a little mildly irritated at the fact that I had less time to unwind.

My theory is that parents use their children as excuses to modify their schedules, and cheat their hours somewhat. Instead of working nine-to-five, they pull some shit like working 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., knowing fully that nobody is usually present at 7:30 a.m., to which they will take advantage of, and roll in at 8:15 a.m., take an innocuous lunch-time at around 11:00 a.m. to overlap with when more normal-timed employees take their lunches, and then roll out at 3:15 p.m., because "15 minutes hardly makes a difference." How do I know this method? I used to do it - kind of. Unlike those types whom I witnessed doing it at UnTrust, I actually showed up at 7:30 a.m. Granted, there normally wasn't much work for me to do then, and I usually used that time to surf the web, check my email, sports scores etc, but at least I was there, and could work, if there was work.

Baseball - as many know, it's been my one outlet and means of joy/relaxation/unhappiness/agony of defeat for the last few years. The Atlanta Braves are in the midst of their worst season in over 17 years, plagued with injury, under performance, and some nasty surprises. And more injuries. I thought I found a few kindred spirits through the internets on this blog I'd been frequently, but apparently, their user base can't handle losing. And so they bicker, argue, lash out . . . a lot. Frankly, to the point where a contributing user like myself wants nothing to do with the rest of them, because many of them can't understand that losing is a part of competition, and to drop and understand their beliefs that the Braves have to win the division, every year. And no matter the encouragement I try to share with others, nobody sees it the same way I do, so fuck 'em. Let them wallow in their self misery and defeatism, while I'd prefer to sit back and enjoy watching the Braves attempt to spoil and screw up the seasons/playoff-chances for others. But regardless of my indifferent conclusion, it still kinda sucks to lose out on some folks I had a common thing with. Oh well, shit happens, I suppose.

I have been enjoying the hell out of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2. A great reminder how much I enjoyed the first Tactics Advance, and I reserve my judgment on whether or not I think it's better or worse. Nor do I have a definitive answer yet to which I think is better between A2 and Luminous Arc. All I can really say is what I've already stated, and that I am really enjoying the game, further justifying that the DS is really the only system I ever need or want.

HA - I knew something like this would happen. Yeah, I've been writing while at work, which is a practice I don't really wish to be doing too often. But I'd rather spend my evenings at home playing Tactics, so better to write away here than re-checking on checking the same old websites and chatting with those who have work to do at their own jobs. But when I write away, things miraculously appear on the workload. A good thing, because I don't think I could continue to write about how stale my life is right now, nor would I wish for anyone to really endure reading about such trite details.