One of my greatest discoveries after college was that life moves as fast as you want it to. Actually, I should say as fast you make it. If playing computer games all night is your sort of thing, go for it. If you would rather research or brainstorm business ideas, you can do that too. One of the differences I’ve noticed between school and “the real world” is that my schedule is much more predictable now, considering my job starts and ends the same time each day. Of course there are certain weeks when a project runs long and the days feel like forever, but for the most part each week is pretty consistent. Taking advantage of free evenings (and the occasional weekends), I’ve been head-deep in researching retirement plans, stocks, home buying, and a slew of web related ideas and projects. Being busy is better than being bored.
One thing I’ve finally done is take time to explore a few personal web ideas. Working freelance has been great and it helps with things like learning business skills and paying the rent. However, one downfall is that you’re learning can be restricted since you’ll most often be working with technologies you’ve already mastered. If the job called for a skill you didn’t yet have, you probably wouldn’t accept the work in the first place. Conversely, personal projects allow for a greater freedom to test new ideas and practices. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed devoting time to some of my recent web concepts and hope to be unveiling finished products in the not-so-distant future.
I mentioned occasional free weekends above because two of my brothers have planned weddings this summer, one was a couple weeks ago and the next is in October. Being family events, both weddings have been extremely fun but time consuming to plan and prepare for. Kudos to Kathy for putting up with all the excitement and being a huge help with designing programs, ironing out dress issues, and lending a hand whenever possible.
As for this blog getting dusty over the past four months, my only excuse is that the transition from school to work entailed a lot of new things. I do hope to write more often now that Kath and I are getting settled in and I think a redesign might be the trick to lure me back…
Good work looking into the retirement plans now! Compound interest is your friend. Depending upon how risky you like to play things, RIG (Transocean) is an interesting stock. They are going to be merging with another company providing shareholders with $33.03 cash and .667 additional shares for each share owned. Oh, and they are currently undervalued.
I know all about busy weekends. I think my life is planned until the middle of October right now!
Comment by Travis — September 17, 2007 @ 1:04 pm
Nice to see a new post on this thing, even if it was just adapted from the email you sent me.
Hope your week is going well.
Comment by Sam — September 25, 2007 @ 7:38 pm
It’s weird how quickly time can move in the real world. I’ve been in it for a year now. It’s nuts. I find I don’t have enough time to do everything. Not at all. I want to get home from work and relax, but at the same time, I want to draw, work on outside projects, play video games all night, and write. Not enough time in the day, I tell you.
Glad to see your back in the blog. I find that setting up a routine for writing helps. Update every X # of days and you’ll force yourself to write. It won’t all be amazing, but you’ll get into a good habit.
Glad things out there are going well! Say hi to Kathy for me.
Comment by ChrisHP — September 28, 2007 @ 4:07 pm
Travis – RIG has been interesting to watch, stocks are fun stuff.
Sam – haha, yep, you can feel lucky for getting the first edition. Actually, a lot of people have been wondering what I’ve been up to and how things are going so the blog helps save me from having to write the same thing over and over.
Chris – Agreed. For the first few weeks of work, I couldn’t believe how nice it was having free evenings again. Of course, the more involved Kathy and I became at work, the harder it was to shut off that “job switch” after hours. We’re right back to being flat-out busy all the time and always searching for spare moments. Good advice on the blog update schedule. For me, the toughest part has been looking at where I am now and understanding the purpose of this blog. Big changes coming soon.
Comment by Adrian — September 30, 2007 @ 8:17 pm
Happy to hear you’re doing well
You’re so smart to be looking long term right now with retirement plans and stocks… I think a lot of people don’t even think about those things until it’s too late.
You’ll have to let us know when you two have a free Saturday or Sunday so we can come visit you! (Also, you guys are more than welcome to come by and see us anytime!)
Comment by Sarah — October 4, 2007 @ 7:51 pm
Hey, Sarah. Yep, it’s good to start early.
We’ll definitely set up a visit sometime. Might be fun to plan a ski trip or something like that. Keep in touch.
Comment by Adrian — October 10, 2007 @ 3:01 pm