I haven’t been in the mood to write lately. That’s not exactly true. I’ve been in the mood to write, but I’ve been either too exhausted, or lacking something to write about.

I know what you’re thinking. “He never lacks something to write about. If he doesn’t have a topic in mind he just rambles until he gets somewhere.” Guilty as charged, under normal circumstances. But the missing piece there is the impetus. Often times I have something to say, but I don’t know what it is. I’m called to writing most strongly when things are challenging me, or when I have something that needs to be said.

Often in recent weeks, I’ve felt kind of drained. Drained enough that thinking about sitting down to write seems rather boring, which is something writing almost never is for me. I think I’m noticing a pattern here. I always seem to write less in the summer months. I suppose we could correlate that to the idea that these are the months when we’re supposed to be active, and writing is an activity that seems more in line with the quieter months.

Whether or not that’s valid, I’m going to try and fight that a bit this year and see where it gets me. The truth is, I have a lot to say in the summer. As much as I have to say in the winter, or any other time of the year. There are a lot of things jumbled in my brain that need to get put out here somewhere, and that won’t happen if I don’t sit down and start typing.

So I’m going to make a concerted effort to keep up blogging this summer, and see if I can push through the lack of inspiration that usually hits me.

Right now it seems that so much of what I could be writing is masturbatory, and as much as I like masturbation, I don’t really love masturbatory writing. What I mean, is that I have a lot of things in my life that are just waiting for attention, and I don’t feel I have the time to give them their due. I have at least two non-fiction books that I want to keep working on, not to mention the various fiction works that are on the back burners. Add to that the non-writing work that I want to get done.

Part of me feels like my teacher Amatheon. Two dozen projects up in the air at any given time, always trying to find the time to work on them. I don’t know how he does it, but I feel as though I’m not giving any of them the attention or disciplined work that they deserve.

Oh yeah, and sometime this summer I have to make sure I can legally marry my Alex and Sam, and write their ceremony, which we haven’t even discussed yet.

I misspoke a moment ago. I shouldn’t have written ‘disciplined work,’ as that is not at all what I meant. I’m not big on disciplined approach or process. Too much process tends to stifle me. It’s one reason why I’m very good at small projects, and have trouble with larger projects. Larger projects need a bit more structure and process associated with them, and I’m not always the best at fitting my creative energy into that process.

I know that it can take years to find the right process, but it’s very frustrating. Anyway, the point is that I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by the number of things I need to do. A lot of what I’ve been doing while I wasn’t writing the past week is trying to get a handle on some of those things.

I’ve gotten a good start. I am in the process of transitioning tgeer.com to theogeer.com, and redesigning the site as a professional resume, and less of a developer blog (since I found I don’t have a lot to say as a developer, and I’ve wanted a slick resume site for a while now). I started by posting some of my code for Project Euler problems, so that I have some code samples up. I’m still thinking about how I want to connect all the pieces together, but I’ve got some pretty simple ideas that should wind up pretty slick.

The cat is laying between my forearms, between my head and the keyboard, and snoring very lightly. She’s a bit grumpy at me right now. Earlier she got down into the stairwell when I came home. We didn’t know where she was and didn’t want to lock her out in case she was out there, so I pretended like I was going to bed.

This is sure fire. It never fails. I plopped down in the bed and stretched out and yawned, and said “kitty, bedtime,” and she came running up the stairs and in the door and straight into my room and up onto the bed. It’s really pretty nifty. But of course, it wasn’t really bed time. So I cuddled with her for a minute, but then I got up to go finish what I was doing. And she didn’t take to well to that. She sat on the bed for about 5 minutes convinced I was coming back, and she was very dissapointed when I didn’t. So now she’s making sure I know she’s here, and that I shouldn’t leave again.

I’ve moved her, because it was getting uncomfortable. She’s gone off to pout somewhere now. In other news, I got a new desk chair today. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been sitting on a kitchen chair since we moved, having gotten rid of my disastrous old desk chair before moving. I got a really nice executive chair from Office Depot on sale, and it came today. It’s very comfy, and it reclines, and it’s nice and wide to fit my entire ass.

On an unrelated note, Karate was great tonight. I’m skipping Thursday because of the Sooj concert. There’s a relatively new guy in class who’s very cute. I have to work really hard not to spend most of the class staring at him. I can’t tell how old he is either, which is bad, because he could be anywhere from 17 to 22. He takes himself very seriously, which is kind of endearing. Gah!

More to the point, I am really pleased with my endurance. I’m still slower than a lot of the other people in the class, and I get worn out pretty completely every class, but I can usually keep up pretty well for most of the hour, and I only get very sore every fourth or fifth class these days, which is good. My ankle is mostly feeling fine tonight, and that makes me happy.

Back to all the random projects that I have in the air. I need to take some more time, soon, to sit down and really organize myself a bit more. I know some of this is going to involve a bit more discipline. Cutting out things that waste time, and probably cut a good chunk of my intake out of my media diet. Killing Digg and Hacker News alone would probably give me an hour a day that I’m just wasting now.

Discipline though, as I’ve mentioned, is not something I’m very good at. I’ve written in the past that I’m trying to find a discipline of undisciplinedness. I’m not there yet, but I have a lot of working pieces. I think a lot of the solution is about controlling what gets focus and attention. Or at least honing that attention to the things that I want to get it. Which has always been a challenge to me. My attention wanders through a whole variety of things, all of which are important, but they rarely get a consistency of focus. And as we know, consistency is key. Consistency is what makes habit, and what shapes the patterns of our life.

The trouble is that my life is consistently inconsistent. Although it’s growing moreso. Now that I have committed to karate twice a week (usually) and possibly three times soon, my schedule is taking on more structure. That scheduled structure seems to be helpful. So I’ll keep working on it.

Time to get some sleep. Share the Gift.