When I started this blog, I was com­mitted to it. I spent time learning how to theme and cus­tomize Word­Press. I ago­nized over how I was going to design it – a process which con­tinues today. I wrote often about my thoughts, my goals, and inter­esting experiences.

I’d like to say that lately I’ve been dis­tracted by life changes. I want to sug­gest that I’ve been taking more time to read – some­thing every writer must take time to do. I’d claim that I’ve been busy learning things – impor­tant things – such as media queries, Drupal, and CSS3. All of these are true and they are all just excuses.

There have been some serious life changes. This year is the first time in more than a decade that I start a new full-time job. Given the flex­i­bility I enjoyed with web­slingerz, you could argue that I’ve never actu­ally had a real full time job. I some­times feel a longing for the days when I spent Sunday evenings in the office with co-workers. We pounded out designs and code and then played net­work games until 4am while enjoying the absence of client phone calls or emails. Even over the past few years as I worked from my home office there was still a sense of belonging to a team – or, if nothing else, a sense of shared burden or crisis or impending doom. We were all in it together.

Now I have a more tra­di­tional desk job. It’s not bad. The people are nice enough. The work is nothing I can’t handle. But I am more of a man on an island. I go in and do my job and come home. I miss the net-work or team-work that is only the result of years and years of shared suf­fering and mutual online gaming combat. But we’re too old for that now, I sup­pose. My life, which was for so long tied up in and with my job, is now sep­a­rate. And while that is part of what I hoped to achieve, it requires a mental adjust­ment that is slow for someone whose mind suf­fers from the atrophy of habit and com­fort­able familiarity.

And yes, in addi­tion to the big life change, I have been taking more time to read. Per­haps it’s more accu­rate to say that my life change resulted in a long com­mute that leaves me with a couple of hours each day that must be filled by an activity that can be under­taken while standing in a crowded subway train. Yes, much more accu­rate. I pur­chased a Kindle and have fin­ished a few books I had wanted to read for a long time. Reading is an escape, but it is also an exer­cise. I feel my imag­i­na­tion lim­bering, my vocab­u­lary expanding, and my mind moved to con­sider things out­side of the games I have installed on my iPhone. I always knew I should be reading more. I’m glad to have been almost forced to do so. But it should not get in the way of writing. If writers should read, then readers should also write. They are thinkers for having con­sumed thought, and sharing that with others is good for humanity and the soul. My reading should never get in the way of writing.

I have also been learning many new things. Much of it is due to my work. I’m forced to learn new things in order to accom­plish my tasks. How­ever, I have also chosen to spend more time working on my var­ious web­site projects. My home page has been under­going a major design revi­sion along with under-the-hood enhance­ments (the afore­men­tioned media queries, for instance). Once I’m momen­tarily sat­is­fied with that work, I plan to move on to updating other parts. A new ver­sion of my resume is already in the works, and I have started thinking of ways to improve this blog.

I always believed that I made poor use of my time. By not wasting time, or by being more effi­cient, I thought that I could have more time for the activ­i­ties I enjoy or need to be engaged in. That chal­lenge has finally been pre­sented. One easy way to gauge my suc­cess will be to see if I am able to write more often.