Introspection

A lot of introspection will be important for me over the next few weeks as I get back from vacation and get back into my routine. I do not want to go back to feeling as stressed and out of control as I did right before vacation. So those of you who just read the journal for the book reviews will have to put up with occasion nattering on, since I seem to think better about some of these things if I write them down and post them to teh Intrawebs.

For the first two days, things have gone fairly well. The main downside is that my estimates were way off on the first two coding tasks I tackled (estimate: 4 hours, actual: 9 hours), and that got to me a little and made me feel like I wasn't getting anything done. But it's just an emotional response, and if I take a step back and keep reminding myself "oh, remember, that stuff took way longer than you expected," it's okay. I know I need to get better at estimates in the long run, but that's a problem that I can live with for right now.

I did struggle with motivation today and probably should have used my to-do list, switched away from the Big stuff, and started doing little things until I recovered a sense of accomplishment. Instead, I distracted myself by working on lintian and bit off a major rewrite of a chunk of code, which wasn't horribly wise. Got it done, though, so it's not hanging over me.

Now, however, it's the weekend, which means a firm shift in gears away from doing day-job stuff. That's one of the changes I want to make: preserving weekends for myself. Day job stuff can wait. Book review writing and video game playing would be a good use of the weekend.