cutting back

I had to go to the hospital again this week for problems with my stomach, I was throwing up on and off for about 4 hours on Monday night before finally going in to get an IV to get some fluids back in my system. I’m feeling a little better now, I’m able to get up and move around, but still can’t eat anything more exciting than toast. Oh, and it really hurts to laugh.

I’m convinced that a large reason for my stomach problems has been stress and anxiety.  Most of the problems have been financial in nature, since I haven’t gotten paid for a lot of contract work I’ve done, and I wasn’t really expecting that to happen.  Aside from that, though, I’m stretching myself too thin with lots of commitments, and I need to start cutting back.

Gentoo is the major committment I’m spending way too much time on right now, I think.  I enjoy working on it a lot, but I’ve got my finger in too many pies right now to keep it balanced and productive.  I’m gonna start cutting off stuff that I’m taking care of, and retreat back to a few areas of maintainership, of stuff that I’m really interested in.  There’s some things I’m taking care of just because no one else will, and while I’ll do my best to clean them up on the way out, I can’t take care of everything I want to forever.  I’ve been thinking about phasing back my workload for a long time now, and the change will be gradual, over a couple of months.

What I’d really like to work on more is get my own religious projects working, like going back to working on nephi.org.  Some of the projects on there I’ve been putting off for literally years.

All in all, what I need the most though is to find some balance and learn to relax.  It is extremely hard for me to to stop and sit still for more than a few minutes, as I’m constantly hyperactive and won’t be satisfied unless I’m engaged in doing something appealing.For the most part, it’s fulfilling because you can accomplish a lot, but it can create a lot of anxiety and pressure when you commit to a lot of things and then can’t keep up, which has been what’s happened with me.

Anyway, while poking around the apartment this week I’ve been playing with my whole TV setup, and especially with Myth.  I came up with this cool method and script last night to create snapshots for my shows in MythVideo.  I’ll have to post details once I get some time.