I don't really blame anybody for not reading anymore. My writing slowly transitioned into a really monotonous, almost robotic, data collection. The only nice thing about being boring-and-diligent was that I could search back through the blog to figure out when something happened, or where I have been. That's great... if I actually went places and did things. Soooo yeah I've been pretty boring lately. I feel like I'm getting old. Things just don't sound fun anymore, or worth the effort.
- On the work side of life, I started the year working on a high visibility project, then transitioned to driving the software development on another high visibility + short schedule project, all while multi-tasking another solo development effort. Obviously I'm going to be ambiguous with my descriptions, the rest would bore you to death. I've been at the same company for a while now, seeing people come and go, mostly go.
- On the school side of life, I took a class between Jan and May, and then another between Aug and Dec. Both classes ended up being more time-intensive than originally planned. They weren't exactly challenging with the content, just lots of manual work. In theory, I have completed all the necessary classes for the program, but I have yet to receive confirmation on that.
- On the family side of life, I lost my last grandparent :( my slightly-younger-than-me cousin got married, the Happy Couple™ moved out of state for greater things, my brother and sis-in-law got a house and a puppy, and my sister and bro-in-law traveled the world and lost a cat. Kelc hosted another annual murder mystery party, also traveled the world, stood in her Lindsey and Jon's wedding, and performed the wedding of Michael and Taylor.
- On the health side of life, I have given up coffee and soda, and only unintentionally get caffeine from chocolate, which is also infrequent. I don't drink much in general, other than trying a sip of other's drinks. I can't even remember the last time I drank an entire beer. I've been getting better about putting time in at the gym, but the results are dismal. I've been slowly incorporating sushi into my diet, and trying to eat clean in general. I definitely feel better when I eat healthy. I started seeing a chiropractor, with positive results in relieving chronic aching and fixing the curves in my spine. I know that the chiropractic industry is seen as "hokey" by a good portion of the medical industry, and sure it might not work for everybody. A spot in my mid-upper back was consistently tender, and ached pretty bad (especially after a jog). Turns out all the muscles in the area were constantly constricted trying to keep the joint from moving. Us bipedal creatures are meant to move.
Now, to turn things into something a bit more engineering-like. I spent a majority of the year using a time tracking application on my old-school smart phone. This is a pretty cool little app, as you can make tasks and sub-tasks, helping to organize everything. It actually works out really well for the way things happen at work. To be a bit more precise, I tracked between March 2nd and December 31st (304 days, or 7296 hours).
First up, I spent 2371.5 hours in bed. Now that isn't necessarily sleeping time, as I tend to watch some TV or play a little on the phone before getting tired. This averages out to about 7.8 hours every night, not bad.
If I'm spending 7.8 hours in bed every day, then that means I have 16.2 hours to work with for the rest of the day. Turns out, on average I spend over an hour every day driving. Yuck. There is a huge category of "unaccounted", which is a polite way of saying that I wasn't tracking anything during this time. I know for sure that some of that unaccounted time should be in the work category, but fell out probably due to me deleting projects/tasks in the program. There are also times when I forget to start tracking when starting to commute, exercise, or doing homework for short periods of time. This pie graph is a mediocre visualization of where my time goes, but spreads everything across the entire time period. For instance, my work time tracked likely falls only between Monday and Friday, but the below graph showing ~36.6% would have you believe that I spend ~5.93 hours every day working, which obviously doesn't make sense. Similarly, yardwork is usually a chunk of time just spent on Saturday xor Sunday.
If anybody wants other analysis of the data, just let me know what you would like to see and I'll make it happen. The "unaccounted" category is pretty alarming to me, as it definitely does not feel like I have that much free time. Maybe I can track time spent on various forms of entertainment. I definitely waste time surfing the internet, playing video games, and watching tv/movies/netflix. Who knows, maybe that time will go to a pet.
