I spent this weekend away from computers and away from programming. My girlfriend and I visited a zoo, went to a drive in, went to dinner, and all in all had a great weekend together. When we weren't spending time together, I was busy reading A Prayer for Owen Meany. It's one of those "classic" books that they try to make you read in school, but for some reason it slipped through the cracks in my educational process.
I try to read a few pages every night before falling asleep, and I've slowly been making my way through the pages. I'm horrible at time management skills. There are always a million things that I want to do, but never enough time to complete them all. Some days I'll sit and read 300 pages in an afternoon. Other times I'll program for 10 hours straight working on whatever it is I've convinced myself needs the most attention.
I'm still trying to find the right balance between relaxing and learning. I love reading (currently I have 4 books lined up that I want to get through). Reading to me is relaxing, but I constantly feel that I need to be working to stay sharp. If I don't make progress on any of my side projects, I start to stress myself out. It all comes down to wanting to do so much with my time that I wind up not doing anything sometimes.
I think it would help too if I actually starting finishing the projects that I start. I always have these grand ideas of what a finished product would look like, but the excitement for me is the challenge of figuring out HOW to complete something. Completing something isn't as fun, but yet provides that feeling that I've been lacking... a sense of "wow, this is finally done, and now I can forget about it and move on."
With all that being said, right now I'm in the midst of 2 projects. One is SharpFlash, which will probably never be done in my eyes. I plan on starting a SourceForge project soon enough and just get some files out there, then placing it on the back burner indefinitely. It was a great learning experience for me, and I'm hoping someone else can finish what I started with it. Another project of mine is a Flash desktop application that I hope to apply the finishing touches to by the end of the month, whenever I get time. It's not a very big or complicated application, but it should turn out to be pretty cool.
I think the most important thing for me right now though is to keep having fun. I need to keep searching for the balance between giving myself personal time, and giving myself time to achieve the goals I set. Either that, or I need to not set so many goals and not work on projects concurrently for fun. Both my dad and grandfather were workaholics, and I'm beginning to see that pattern reflect in my actions.
I'm fresh out of college, and I thoroughly enjoy programming, but I think I'm doing too much of it at home. Part of the problem is that academically college required so much of time (homework, labs, group projects, programming assignments, etc), that I'm still trying to figure out how to best spend my "free" time that I have working full time. I have all of this time that I just don't know what to do with... but I know I need to get away from my computer a little more. Life isn't about Flash, or Java, or C#, or Web Design, or ColdFusion, or SQL, though sometimes I try to convince myself otherwise.
And on that note, tonight I'll be spending the evening away from my computer and enjoying some quality time with the Simpsons and Own Meany, and reflecting on a great weekend. Then it's back to work tomorrow, and we'll see if and how the pattern repeats itself...
If you made it this far in this post, congratulations. :-)
I came to your site, and I really admired all the work and effort you apply investigating new meanings for ActionScript, and your FlashSharp project. I feel very much like the way you feel, I spent time learning, and even if I finished school, I am still attempting to do other things more advanced with Flash. Check out my project it works like a desktop, but very much like you, I have it half way I need more things to be put on it. I want to learn Flash Comm Server, and see how it feels, and also Flex, but we will see. Take care and yes have fun, you need to spend sometime out, and those wonderful ideas will come while you have fun...