(Phaysis)

As hoped, I made my return to Austin before midnight sunday night; it was 11pm exact when I cruised into my apartment’s lot. I made decent time on the drive: 6 hours, 24 minutes. In the past, that would have normally been six hours flat; now that I had a speeding ticket, I’m paying a little more attention to my speedometer. Ah well. My goal was to leave Texarkana before 5pm, and given the early start in the morning, I was well on my way towards that.

I woke up around 9:30-ish thanks to the kids (which was fine). I spent some time with them and my sister, then gathered my things, put on some clothes (the shower could wait), and hugged everyone goodbye.

On my way to my mother’s apartment I pulled into a nearby parking lot to pull out the laptop, plug in the wireless card, and do some wardriving. No sooner did I set up the system, I got a strong hit from one of the businesses near that lot, so I pulled up to the building and did my business: checked the weather for the road, posted a journal update, and checked my bank balance. I then disconnected, put the car in gear, and drove away towards a nearby ATM to pull some gift money.

I continued to mother’s apartment to take her out for a meal and some face time. I had plenty of time to kill, so I asked her to bring out her Florida photos and I brought my ACLFest photos. It’s good to hang out with my mother, but she keeps thanking me for coming to pay a visit; I’m just stymied that she does that. She gets so few visitors, I think that’s why she does it. But we spent some time catching up; she told me all about her Red Cross volunteer trip down to Florida to help out after hurricane Ivan, and we talked about her current illness. She can’t work right now, hasn’t been able to work for 3 weeks, and I worry about her. My own mother can’t work, and I’m out buying laptop bags and car stereos; is it right or wrong that I’m feeling guilt? But I left her with a gift of the only way that I can help: cash. I can’t bring her food or drive her to the store; money is the only way I can help.

I hugged her goodbye around 4:00 and went to a nearby quickmart to fill up the tank, get some road snacks, and went next door to pick up some motor oil. I reached the edge of town around 4:30pm. The trip home was smooth sailing.

Today, I got up and was late to work as usual. I took a shower this morning, but by noon I felt like the shower was completely wasted and negated. I think it might be best to take a shower after work. I spent most of today at the saddle-stitch end of the collator, away from everyone, so I had my laptop out and in jukebox mode; played mostly a random playlist. Got both of the book jobs done in good time. Had enough time afterwards to go sit at the table and do a sitdown job, so I checked print. Didn’t get to chat much today to catch up on Things, but that’s fine. There’s tomorrow.

At day’s end I left and got some food. With my belly full, I felt fat and bloated (it doesn’t take much these days), so I went home where I fell into the trap of doing absolutely nothing at all but play solitaire and listen to depressing ambient music. Finally got my ass moving at 10:30pm, and now I’m drinking coffee late at night and filling the intarweb with more drivel.

I keep having ideas about my programming projects, and about my music, and about my other creative outlets. But I can’t do them. My projects have become a serious hassle to me, a burden. They’re all in a “started” or “underway” state, and not one of them is finished. The desire to finish them, the need to finish them, is great and heavy, but it’s in that crush that I just can’t finish. The whole programming thing, I’m completely fried out, and this burnout is coming much too often. I go away for half a week, and nothing has changed. The Fire is just not there. My muses have let me down.

So. I’m home, I’m here, and I’m back to more of the same. Welcome home.

Sleepy. Mellow. My thinking is currently numb, quiet, and studious.

About two weeks ago I reached burnout. I have so many projects and ideas swirling around and perpetually ongoing. Nothing finished. Nothing usable. There’s so much work to programming, and there’s so little time in my off-work life. If I was paid to do this, I’d hate it, sure, but I’d get more done. The best times of my day for programming would be during the day when I’m on the clock at work, but there’s none of that for me, none. I work at a printshop. So when I spend most of my free time either in front of my computer or chained to my laptop, I can’t think about my code because the very code that I wrote only weeks ago is now foreign to me. I spend so much time just staring at the code, glazed, because I can’t stay acquainted with it, I can’t devote large chunks of time to it. So I poke a few lines here, spend a few minutes getting lost, and then I spend a few days away from it either by schedule, disinterest, or inability to find a place conducive to writing the code. So there’s my burnout. There’s my brain fry.

So, what now? Chrontium development is suspended until further notice. My website engine is on indefinite hiatus. Those and like 10 other projects are all back-burnered until I get some basic groundwork figured out again, until I get my stuff together, until I feel like making headway again.

My apologies to anyone that this may dishearten.

On the upside, though, I picked up a book on XML. Something offline to help keep me going. I’ve been wanting to figure this XML thing out for a while, and finally I found a book that helped me make sense of it. XML is pretty technical, but it’s human-readable. It’s a system of marking up regular text into what each piece of text actually is. If you’re publishing a paper you can, say, put the title inside a title tag, and the introduction in an introduction tag, and later down the road a person or a program can read those and go, “Ok, this is the title. I’d like to make all my titles have 24-point bold text.” Through the use of style sheets or XSL, you can do that. Pretty cool stuff. Very “object oriented” – everything is enclosed in something else; it’s all “tree-like” in programatic structure. Nice.

If anything, reading up on XML has helped me keep an interest in programming, if only for the pure “objects and containers” aspect. Figure out the most basic units of function and build from there. I’ve begun attacking certain pieces of code, just experimentally. Nothing towards any specific ends. That’s when programming is fun, I suppose.

Tonight, I took my mellow, quiet mood and stopped by Cheapo Records to pick up some fresh music. I decided to go with today’s Cure thread and beelined for The Cure’s “Pornography” (1982) which, after tonight’s first spinning, is rather good. Essential listening for any Cure fan. I then went cruising up and down the cd bins when another band name appeared in my head, and I had to check it out. The band is Slowdive, and I know very little about them other than repeated recommendations that I should listen to them. I grabbed their cd “Souvlaki” and took it to the counter for a test listen, and the clerk was like, “Dude, just go ahead and buy it. It’s that good.” After hearing parts of a few songs, I was clear on the matter: “Sold.” I stopped off at a hidey-hole of a restaurant for some playing with code while I ripped the two CD’s. They’re in my playlist now, and they perfectly fit my mood.

Blue, black and green.
Melancholy, emptiness, and hope.