BCBlog

So I advise you not to play this game.

(P.S. - Can any of you get through 22 levels? No you can’t, because you will NOT play this game.)

The reason I first became involved with Blogcritics.org, on Day One, was because I love to write. I like to think that I’m a writer who happens to have geek skills. So I wrote some pieces for the opening day of Blogcritics.org, and later got involved in fixing some technical issues, and eventually became the full-time technical administrator of the site. Only I still have a day job, too. So I put in my 40 hours a week at the office, and then usually pile on another 40 or 50 hours a week at home, staying up late and working all day on the weekends. I’m using up all of my vacation time from the day job to take a day off here and a day off there so I can spend all day working on the site. Which means, of course, that I’m taking no real vacation at all.

All of which serves as background to today. Today is one of the “vacation” days, so I sat down at 9am to put in a full day for Blogcritics.org. I spent two hours slogging through two of the three email groups related to the site (circles within circles!) and fighting a problem that eventually crashed the whole site. It’s an ongoing problem that has been plaguing us for months, despite my efforts and the best efforts of our ISP to track it down. At 11am, I realized that I had spent two hours accomplishing nothing but increasing my frustration, and to top it off, I’m told there has been a minor uproar in the third email group I should investigate. I check in to find 350 messages there. Time for a break!

I rarely get preturbed. I sometimes affect annoyance to get people to leave me alone, but actually upsetting me is quite difficult. And yet I really needed a break this morning! I hugged each of my three kids, which instantly reversed my mood. My son showed me some drawings, and he has clearly made a major breakthrough artistically, what with multiple colors and staying (mostly) within the lines and such. I made a big cup of tea (Twinings English Breakfast), nibbled on a butterscotch bar from church last night and sat down again.

When I found the “problem email,” I was relieved. Since I’d been told little, I assumed the worst, but what I found was the best sort of email: one borne out of concern for a site that might be on the path to ruination. It took me an hour to respond right away, and it will take me longer to actually implement some of the changes, but I was glad to see the email.

Of course, then it was 12:30pm, and my kids were calling me to lunch. And now it’s 1:10pm as I finish this blog post.

Which underscores the realization that while I joined Blogcritics.org to write, I’m doing very little writing these days. The first half of my day, nearly, has been chewed up with little writing and less technical work. So this afternoon, no email!