Xmas 2002
I've been meaning to collect and edit my notes from my Christmas break this past year. It was a blast. But until then, you can take a look at a short music video I made from some footage all of us shot on my camcorder over break. Editing on the Mac is fun!
I'm still nervous about starting my leave. Part of it may be that it's been so long since I didn't have a job or student ID to identify myself by, and maybe part of me feels guilty for taking a break. Most people my age don't just up and travel around the world, and my personality struggles with idle time.
Every week I feel calmer, though. The keys will be to stay extremely busy, never feel entitled to anything (other than the usual life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness stuff), and to be as brave as possible.
Life is too short not to surround ourselves with the most courageous people and to seek to match their courage. I need to not be afraid to be jobless and to have free time, and the easiest way to cure that is to define my life's job differently and to fill my free time with personal projects. Fortunately, a growing part of me finds the whole prospect exhilarating.
I may have to extend my last day of work out to next Tuesday. Whether that's my last day of work at Amazon ever or just for a few months is up in the year, but tonight as I left the office late, walking by the cleaning man as he vacuumed the hallways, I thought, "Ah, this is the way I'd like to leave Amazon someday." Stay late to wrap things up, until no one is left in the office but me. Take a few pictures down from the wall, pack up my last few personal items into a box, take one last glance around before turning off the lights in my office, and walk out into the night by myself.
Digging for gold
The product selection in Amazon's Gold Box is getting better and better. If you haven't logged into Amazon to check it recently, you should check once a day (you only see it if you have a customer account at Amazon and are logged in with your cookies enabled so that our site can recognize you). In recent days I've received a ton of tempting offers. $600 off a Canon XL1S camcorder, $60 of a 5GB Mac iPod, $30 off some Motorola Talkabouts (which I redeemed), and 36% discounts off of a whole bunch of DVDs (unfortunately I've owned all of them already). Since I used to get the vibrating mole chaser about once every other day in my Gold Box, this is a huge step.They keep pullin' me back in
This week has been insane, as is to be expected. So many things to wrap up at work, a hundred peer reviews and employee evaluations to write, not the least of which would be my own. Maybe that will be something I do while I'm on vacation.I'm still nervous about starting my leave. Part of it may be that it's been so long since I didn't have a job or student ID to identify myself by, and maybe part of me feels guilty for taking a break. Most people my age don't just up and travel around the world, and my personality struggles with idle time.
Every week I feel calmer, though. The keys will be to stay extremely busy, never feel entitled to anything (other than the usual life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness stuff), and to be as brave as possible.
Life is too short not to surround ourselves with the most courageous people and to seek to match their courage. I need to not be afraid to be jobless and to have free time, and the easiest way to cure that is to define my life's job differently and to fill my free time with personal projects. Fortunately, a growing part of me finds the whole prospect exhilarating.
I may have to extend my last day of work out to next Tuesday. Whether that's my last day of work at Amazon ever or just for a few months is up in the year, but tonight as I left the office late, walking by the cleaning man as he vacuumed the hallways, I thought, "Ah, this is the way I'd like to leave Amazon someday." Stay late to wrap things up, until no one is left in the office but me. Take a few pictures down from the wall, pack up my last few personal items into a box, take one last glance around before turning off the lights in my office, and walk out into the night by myself.