Craigs Blog

Over the past few years my jobs gone in cycles. Big projects come, lots of work involved and I stop doing some life stuff to accomodate it and then things settle back down again. This year seems to have been a little different – I’ve rolled from one big project into another and it’s starting to have something of an impact. What brought it home for me was this time last week. This time last week I was still at work. I’d had a call from my wife sammy saying that misty wasn’t well and she was taking her to the vets. I knew sammy was worried but left it till about seven to go join her, knowing I still had things to do and planning to head back to the office. I saw misty and she seemed fine even though the vets wanted to keep her in. I wished her good night and left sammy with friends at the pub and trotted back to work. I got home about 9pm, 9.30 or so. The call came in at 10 that this wee thing whose home I cleaned out once or twice a week for the past five years, who I’d seen to it she was fed, paid for her vet bills and such, that she had gotten worse and died. Just like that. It struck me a little while later what would it have been like if I’d not been there for sammy, shortly after I wondered what it would’ve felt like to not have taken the time to see her before she passed.

So works not looking like it’s changing and right now my priorities are messed up. I was running around trying to do stuff for work, make time for sammy, apologise to guildies in wow for not turning up on organised events, occasionally talk to my family and check the menagerie was ok. I have/had no time to take time to change things so I would have time – if that makes sense. There’s a thing in t’ai chi that seems to fit. There’s this idea of being locked up, or pinned, when you can no longer move your limbs because of the other players actions. The way to free yourself is to yield, open up some space by sacrificing a little ground. So, this is what I have done. I have taken myself off my guilds raid roster to find a little space to sort stuff out. In truth the options were my job (pays the bills), my career development (ensures more expensive bills in future will be paid), WoW time or my marriage (not an option ;o) ). So no real choice. I’ve all but sacrificed time I used to play with t’ai chi.

Stepping back I see that I’ve packed on some more weight this year – travelling all over and slowly taking away any sort of exercise from my routine has affected my health in truth. So now I just gotta use the time, work out how to change things. I’m already yielding some of my workload to colleagues whom I likely ought to have handed over to months ago.

So whilst I’ve not quit wow and sharded all my goods and stuff I am toning it down. I hope to use the time to hone some of the skills I’ve picked up in recent training. This should in time allow me to produce more, get more done in less time – perhaps I can get back to it all.

Oddly tough decision though – seems like I went through / am going through the phases of accepting change (shock, denial, anger, bargaining, etc.).

Still, already knocked some stuff off my todo list that had been there too long.

I am still planning to play this weekend – want to finish my leatherworking and make me some windhawk armor :D