The work week has finally ground to a halt. The project that sucked the life out of me for the last month ground to a begrudging halt. I will admit to being both mentally and physically drained. At times this week you could have included “emptionally drained” too. It’s been hard.
This evening I’m at something of a loose end. It’s been so long since I had free time that it’s almost alien. Where most people might spend free time watching television, I’m back in front of a computer. The netbook is rigged as a temporary webserver (running up an instance of the Turnkey Linux LAMP stack within VirtualBox, running atop Ubuntu if you’re at all interested), iTunes is blaring out an album by “Brinck”, and I’m learning about a web development platform I’ve not used before.
Learning, learning, learning. It never stops.
While talking to a colleague earlier about television programmes and movies, it occurred to me that I really don’t watch network television any more. I’m not quite sure when or why I stopped watching it. I see the odd programme now and again - but don’t make a point of watching anything. It sounds strange to even say that. A part of me tends to think the time spent sitting like a potato, watching some work of fiction would be better spent doing something of benefit to either myself, or my future situation.
I guess the trap is that I lose sight of some of the more important things - like spending time with my family. All this learning and working might make a little money here and there, but it doesn’t buy back the time I might have spent playing frisbee with the children.