To sleep, perchance to dream
This sucks. I should be in bed. I'm tired, and tired of being tired (tired of being admired? Let's face it -- I'm pooped). But somehow I seem to be unable to make the concession to sleep. Going to sleep is admitting that the day is over, and I've done nothing useful all day. I should try to be productive; work toward the goals of getting more money (i.e., actually billing some of my clients), or a cleaner house. But all I can manage to do is randomly wander the Internets, clicking from site to site, consuming everything yet producing nothing in return. My attention wanders, like an ADD-infested rat on Ritalin. Quickly jerking from one idea to the next, to yet another, than back to the first again for a few more minutes. Then repeat three or four times.
I'm tired, but not sleepy. There are plenty of stories about people who get bursts of energy in the middle of the night and will go on binge projects -- clean their entire house, write a book, or create a masterful work of art in one sitting. I want to be one of those people. To wake up Wife at 6 am, dreary yet elated from the stupendous results of my project. Babe, look what I did while you were busy sleeping! The place is gorgeous! The painting is a masterpiece. The pottery...well, I don't have a wheel in the house. Just way more imagination than sense.
As yet another manifestation of my depression, I bought a new computer. I've been planning on buying around this time anyway; waiting for a certain conflux of technologicial events -- Intel's Penryn family of CPUs to become affordable and Vista Service Pack 1. Well, they're out now, so with much trepedation I bent over, picked up the phone, and called Dell. Approximately $2,500 later I have one brand, spanking (that always sounds so kinky) new Dell XPS 420. Four gigs of RAM, E8500 CPU @ 3.16G, 2 x 500G hard drives, nVidia 8800GT 512M video card, and yes, two monitors. I went nuts and got the 24" with adjustible stand, and every video/audio input the guys at the factory could come up with. Next to it is my "old" 17" digital, fully-adjustable LCD screen so I've got my two monitor honey pie. I'm going to keep it for six years, just like my previous ones, so it's not as outlandish as it may seem.
But all this system is is a giant enabler. Letting; nay, helping me multitask, making it very simple for me to do a bit of A, then on to a bit of B, then some of C, and finally back to A. But Just for a minute, because B and C are still calling for me. Having a new computer let's me run 30 IE windows, Outlook, 10 Firefox tabs, iTunes, and a mapping program all at once, each working on a different project. It's just amazing (I know I keep coming back to that word, but I can't think of anything more appropriate right now). Technology as an enabler. Who woulda thunk?
