Our Year Off

The thing I hate about going out on a limb and saying “oh i’m going to do this wonderful thing” is answering the question later, “what happened? i though thought you were going to do xyx?”

I don’t think the year off is going to happen. I don’t think we want to let go of all our retirement savings to play for a year; we’re too attached to the idea that we’re going to get something tangible for that. Or maybe it’s better to say I’ve been too attached to that idea. Steve is continuing to look for a job he likes better, I’m considering a number of alternatives to what I’m doing.

When it comes to projects and big crazy ideas, I’m fast out of the gate, but unless energy feeds back into the cycle, I die in the backstretch. And it’s hard to get energy for something this. Friends and what little family I’ve shared it with mostly don’t comment at all, in my mind indicating disapproval. And Steve and I haven’t exactly had a lot of energy around the matter between ourselves. I’m foundering with it.

I do know that it’s not working for me to do the kind of work I do in my job. I work with wonderful people on a wonderful mission, but on some days, having to edit one more web template or QA one more development project or attend one more meeting where we go around in a circle and try to track problems we’ve submitted to an invisible problem queue somewhere….ugh, I’m sick to death of it.

I joke to my hawk watch buddies that I’m unhappy about it, “But I have a good cry before I go into work and it’s ok.” That’s less funny as time goes on. I do good work, but I’m not engaged in the way I’d like to be, and so I feeling that my work is below par.

I think we’ve identified one important thing: we love the bay area, and we’d like to stay here. That’s been a very worthwhile thing to identify.

I’ve considered a number of things as they relate to this stagnation of energy I feel, and this weblog. I’ve thought about removing all of my posts, about redirecting the entire site, about trying to regain energy and write more. For now, I’ll probably leave things be, and leave it as an open option. But I really wanted to say something about the fact that I know this one is appearing to be defunct.

I’ll continue blogging in the meantime on my general weblog, TerrieMiller.com.