Burnout!

Ever get to a point where you just feel burnt out in every single aspect of your life? Life at home, life at work, life with your friends, family, loved ones? And it's not necessarily anything they've done, just common, run of the mill, 'need a break from it all for a while' burnout?

This is where I am right now.

If it were just one or even two parts of my life, I could deal. Just take a little break from that area, focus on something else, come back in a few days or weeks refreshed and ready to tackle things with a new perspective. But alas, it's not just one or two parts of my life. It's every. Single. One.

And this need of a break is even extending to things that I'm not even actively doing. I've got a pile of unread books sitting around that I've been putting off. Movies, a small handful of games, TV shows, backlogged. I've got half a dozen creative projects that I've been intending to start, false starting, started and shelved... Sometimes, I have the time and just don't want to get into it, and other times, it's all I wanna do but I'm stuck doing anything else. It's maddening, really.

But its the big areas that I'm more concerned with.

Work burnout, however, gets a lot more worrisome. It makes you sloppy, less professional, and more willing to take chances just because you really don't give a fuck. And of course, I work in one of the more upscale, professional types of places in the casual dining hospitality industry, and it's been starting to show that I'm cracking a little under the surface. This is something that I really need to put the brakes on now, before I really screw up and get an unwanted kind of vacation. The kind that involves making a full time job out of finding a full time job.

Home burnout, is probably the least affecting one I have right now. Things around the house are fairly stable and for the most part, relaxed. There have been a few bumps along the way, but for the most part, everything lately has been getting a lot more manageable. Would a change of scenery be nice? Absolutely. Will it kill me to wait a few more months? Not right now.

Social burnout, this can get linked to two separate social circles.

My drinking circle, I've really cut back on the last few weeks, because of all the extra work I've been having to do. Of course, in my line of work, working more makes that end of shift beer sound that much better, but I've been trying to cut back on spending, and drinking out is the first thing to go. This'll change in a few weeks when a night or two out becomes a bit more affordable. It's been kind of nice not getting into a lot of the drama that comes out of these though, so there's another bonus.

My geeking circle, we've been getting burnt out on fast moving deadlines for goals we haven't been able to hit just yet, and everyone involved has been feeling the strain. Some people have already started taking the time off to recover, which puts the rest of us at a disadvantage, because we can't do things without them, which causes us to get more frustrated, which causes more burnout related breaks, which just becomes cyclic. There's other things involved here as well, which I have to take a bit more shit for since I'm in something of a leadership position in some aspects of things. This, likely, will become another post topic later on.

That odd center of the Venn Diagram of my primary social circles, ironically, is totally stress and drama free right now, thankfully.

So what can I do? I'm already planning a vacation early next month, which should help immensely with the work, home, and drinking circles. Said vacation corresponds with some things relating to my geeking circle, which deadlines hit or not, won't matter because 99% of our current projects will get scrapped and we'll be into something totally new. And maybe while I'm on this vacation, I'll figure out exactly how much juggling I really need or want to do, and come back with a few less plates in the air.

After all, everyone prefers 'moderately relaxed, smart assed because it's funny and I don't really mean it' Me more than 'rediculously stressed, extremely angry, purposefully mean so you'll leave me the hell alone' Me. I know I prefer the first one.

Anyone see that ball I dropped?

Get your minds out of the gutter.

I have a good reason though. Work finally leveled out and ramped up and brought a whole new level of topics to cover, which, ironically enough, I just had to sign a paper saying that I couldn't. I'll have to find a way to twist it around, although no one really knows which restaurant concept I do work at unless they, ya know, actually know me. And I hope they're smart enough not to say anything about it in the comments. I actually like my job.

I also moved. Got a pretty nice new apartment with a pretty awesome roommate. One of my neighbors sucks, and that's definitely going to be a topic that gets touched upon soonish (though hopefully not as heavily handed as the 'topic in question' gets 'touched' several nights a week). And now I feel dirty for even trying to make a domestic violence metaphor.

I've also been doing less geeking and more drinking lately too, during the transition period. It doesn't help that there's a decent hangout bar between where I work and where I have to park for work. But now that things have settled down some, that particular habit will correct itself.

Onto the writing front. I've gotten all my scattered notes together and half transcribed, and misplaced several of my written backups. I do have a few of them saved to backup discs. The catch there, though, is they're on 3.5s... And I haven't actually owned a computer with a 3.5 drive since... 2003? It's pretty moot anyways, since I've been gutting 90% of everything I had previously written and been redoing it almost from scratch. So that's coming along as well as can be expected. I did, however, decide to not post a few sample chapters, and just start the story from the beginning. I think it'll help me have it all flow better, and less chance I'll screw up the continuity of things. More on that later.

Lastly, I do wanna touch on a bit of actual geekery. E3 just came and went, and the one thing I was pretty hyped about was announced a few weeks prior. MAHVEL, BABY! Everything I've seen about MvC3 over the last few weeks has me so hype for this. I really can't express it enough. The new trailer looks fantastic, the match vids from E3, the released third of the lineup, and the speculation of who will realistically make the cut in the final build... I really haven't been this excited about a new game release in a very long time. Ten years to be exact. And it was for MvC2. I don't even get this hype for MMO expansions (though I am totally ready for Cataclysm).

So it looks like I've got a handful of topics to hammer out over the next few days. Hopefully I won't drop the ball again. I actually want to talk about this stuff. If it happens, I won't be apologetic for not keeping up with what at the end of the day is a hobby, but I'll make an effort.

Employment and Writing...

So I've started a new job, opening up a restaurant. So far, it's been pretty good. Once the labor pars get established and our target clientele figures out who they are and that we're actually open, then things will get a little more smoothed out and we'll actually start making money. Nature of the beasts, I suppose. It does, however, cut back on a lot of my free time that I've been lately working on my writing.

Speaking of writing, a few weeks ago one morning, I was sitting in on a speech trying not to fall asleep when I started jotting things down on the back of the program. I ended up with 3 pages worth of connectivity notes for a story I started writing almost 12 years and 300 pages ago, linking it to a few other false start projects I've got laying around. This got me actually pretty excited about what I think will eventually end up being a 4 part story. What at first only was to be a nod and a wink (a bartender with a couple of scars on her hand, who showed up in two separate stories, in a very eerie bit of clairvoyance. I initially wrote her about 3 years before I started bartending, and certainly before I got a few scars of my own in the exact same place on my hand), ended up making me relook at a lot of the similarities and start to draw a few natural connections in other places.

So I think what I'm going to do is post up the first chapter, of two or three of the four different book ideas here and see which ones get the most love. I think they're all stories worth telling, and I kinda love each of them and the ideas they bring to the table, I just can't decide which one to take and really run with first, not that I want to get serious about it. So come Monday, I'll let y'all help me. =P