T w e n t y S i d e d

For the last few days my body, chief victim of my ambitions, has issued vigorous protest against the things I was asking of it. Indeed, protest was the only thing it was willing to do with any degree of vigor. Its complaints were coldly rebuffed; I’m simply too busy to be bossed around by my body, which I view as nothing more than a support system for the all-important brain, which has a bunch of important stuff going on if you don’t mind, so suck it up.

But the body cannot subsist on willpower alone. Jedi Knights notwithstanding, the mastery of the mind over the body is a tenuous relationship, and one which is easily reversed. For example… Continue reading ⟩⟩ “I Got Some Rest!”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

For the past couple of years my life has been a carefully managed collection of projects. Once my day job ends, I have to ration the remaining hours of the day among my many projects and responsibilities. Family time. The comic. My exercise regimen. Writing for this site. Reading time. Weekly D&D game. Videogame time. Taking care of my wordpress plugins and fulfilling my other admin duties here. I do not pretend they are done in that order.

A couple of weeks ago I began a new project, and I managed to bite off more than I can chew. I figured if I cut out videogame time I’d be able to get by. As luck would have it, Shawn suggested a break from the comic just as the project began, so that was two items off my daily itinerary. Still, I have too much on my plate now. I can’t bear to cut anything, which leaves me at something of a loss. There are only so many hours in the day, and no degree of diligence and self-discipline can change that. I tried borrowing a few hours from sleep time, but you can’t ever get ahead doing that and at my age the interest payments are murder.

It’s odd, because having one too many projects doesn’t just mean I fail one of them, I seem to be failing all of them. One problem is that I underestimated the drain that the new project would put on me mentally: After a long day of coding at work my brain is mush. It seemed reasonable that I could drop my two hours of videogame time and replace it with scripting, but I failed to take into account that I needed those couple of hours of mental rest. The exercise program is a similar problem. I figured I could handle an hour of exercise a day. I failed to account for the fact that after the workout ends I’m too exhausted to do anything productive. I’m rushed and distracted during family time, because I’m thinking about all the other stuff I “should” be doing. I’m not getting all the things done for my website that I want (I’d planned on doing an April Fool’s day theme for this site that would make it look like a horrible mid-90’s Geocities page) and it is only by the narrowest of margins that I’ve avoided resorting to YouTube and top-ten list posts.

It’s like I’m juggling: Adding one too many items didn’t just make me drop one, it made the entire act impossible.

Looking back, I know that at 26 years old I could have kept up with this workload, but I lacked the self-discipline. Now at 36 I have the discipline, but my mind and body can’t keep up. I’m not sure what I’ll do next. Chainmail Bikini starts up again soon. I really need to start cutting things.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.