The title of the post is supposed to be a homonym of Capote’s “Holly Golightly” – did I succeed in the reference?

Not many thoughtful posts lately. I’ve felt just sort of cruddy, wiped out, and majorly stressed out, which sort of saps the creative juices. Not even the fattest bottle of Absolut or lengthy row of ice-cold Stella Artois can get the writing going when your mind stubbornly refuses to be present.

I went into work early this morning, but my mid-morning I felt cruddy so I took the rest of the day off and had a four-hour nap, which was delicious, and which did the trick – for today anyway. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow. I’m missing tonight’s Seattle Tech Startups meeting in preference for resting and storing up my energy for tomorrow. The first kickball practice for the work team is tomorrow afternoon, so we’ll see if I feel up to going to that. I’d like to suit up and get out there and kick some butt, work off some loose, unproductive energy, and have some fun, but not if I continue to carry around this wiped-out feeling.

Mentally: I suppose “not present” is as good a way to describe it as anything. I’ve been able to focus in bursts, and get my work done, but once the work day is over, I’m off to la-la land. Just a ton going on that takes time to process; by this time next week or next month things will likely be 100% back to normal. In the meantime, I’m distracting myself with programming tasks, and have been having fun learning PowerShell and re-learning F#, both of which take a certain amount of brain power.

I’m looking forward to BarCamp this weekend as a sort of forced exposure to the kinds of people and conversations that I love – motivated techies, optionally with beer – even though I might otherwise bow out based on how I feel right this moment. This wiped-out feeling will pass by the weekend, I’m sure, and I know I’ll have a TON of fun at BarCamp, so there you go. No reason to stay home. I have to remember to bring business cards for all the new people I expect to meet. There’s a fun period of about two weeks right after a conference like this where you make appointments for coffee or lunch with all of the new, interesting people you meet – I’m looking forward to that and expanding my horizons a bit. Lately I’ve felt insular or static in my thoughts and in my daily habits. Exposure to new people will help bust me out of that rut.

I was thinking about giving a talk, but my friend Marina is also thinking of giving a talk on the same subject, and since she does that productivity / effectiveness stuff for a living, I’m going to cede the floor and listen to what she has to say. After all, nobody pays me to tell them how to get productive! Looking around my house right now, I can tell why. Lots of little household tasks have been piling up, and I haven’t much felt like doing them. That’s got to change, and soon, or else I’ll be so far behind I’ll never catch up.

That’s all for now – thanks for listening! Reports from BarCamp will be forthcoming following the weekend.