just thinking outloud here

Thinking a lot lately about what I want out of my life and what I'm willing to do to get it. I'm in a job that I don't particularly like, doing very little design work and mostly pushing pixels for other people. It's just this side of deadening. If I got along better with the people here, it'd probably help. But what am I willing to do to get out of this situation? Am I willing to break out of my comfort zone? Can I get myself off the couch?

My disappointment with my situation and myself comes and goes in waves. Sometimes I just want to rest and do nothing. I have allowed myself to do that too often, at times. It's become my default setting. I fear that Amy and I are too similar in this regard — things take us a long time to do when they're complicated or just difficult to do for whatever reason (see: wedding thank yous, putting shelves up in our closet, etc.).

And yet, at times, I can rise to the occasion. The greatest thing, perhaps, about doing that Crosspix book is that it forced me to work my ass off. I had to grab every spare minute and worked myself into a migraine at the finish of it. It was fantastic. I mean that. Seriously. I haven't been that intensely focussed on something in a long time.

And isn't that part of what makes a good life? To have goals — to have finish lines to cross — and to accomplish them, to cross them. It gives you meaning to have things to look forward to, whether it be a vacation, or a holiday, or the completion of something... especially something that is taxing, that makes you confront your boundaries, something that challenges you.

I have been bad about making deadlines, about setting goals for myself. I live too much in my head — in my tiny thoughts — and not enough out in the world, pushing things around, making things. Underneath all this increasingly soft exterior, inside the dark recesses of my cry-baby heart and the tangled weirdness that is my brain, there are stories I want to tell... things I want to create.

I am more than this job, or the small choices I make in my life. There's much more potential (I hate that word) and much more possibility (better word) in me. Get off the damned couch, Dave.