My Wet Coast Life

Rolling into day 3 of being unemployed and starting to notice the psychological effects on me for not being employed. I enjoy working. I've been working since i was young and so used to it, my wife forces me to leave any and all work at home when we go on vacation. What I have noticed is 2 mains things so far. Firstly, I am sleeping a lot less and waking up almost every hour. Last night would be described as a Casino slot machine night in my opinion. I saw 3:33, 4:44 and 5:55 on the clock before giving up on sleep and getting up. Would have been a big winner at the casino but instead I lost big on the sleep factor.

The other thing I have noticed, is being so focused on researching my future options, finding a new job and re-educating myself on the art of resume writing and applying for a job, I am forgetting to eat. I have a high metabolism and tend to eat a lot. My body promptly tells me when it is in need of substance. In the last couple days, I have missed eating lunch twice and eating dinners after 830pm. My stomach is also not doing the vocal growl demanding food which it normally does when neglected. I am not even gonna consider weighing myself as I know I've lost more weight and that will just make it worse knowing how much weight I've shed and need to put back on. Whether it is stress or distractions causing me not to eat or just the mental aspect of checking a couple more jobs before taking a break or just the stress of it all causing this, one can only guess. I've noticed before taking a break, I'll tell myself to check a couple more jobs before breaking, only to realize an hour later I didn't take a break. I then tell myself a couple more jobs and then a break. 1 hour later, the cycle repeats itself again. Next thing lunch and dinner have passed and still no substance in my stomach.

Hopefully today, i will try and break that cycle and have gone to the extent of setting reminders to eat. I used to joke back in my support days when logging into someone's account and seeing their calendar and laughing. Why did I laugh? These people planned there day out to almost the minute. One guy's schedule showed when he was to get dressed, eat, brush teeth and even go to the bathroom! Maybe it was OCD (or CDO for the OCD's) or just being real good with time management but for each person, we all have our own way of managing ourselves and our time.

Follow up:

As for today's plans, I expect to apply for some more jobs, upload my site and finish some PC work I have put off for not having the time. I also hope to finish organizing my music collection. It is a vast collection and currently over 66,000 songs totaling over 402GB. It is an epic task of sorting all of the tunes, cleaning up the file names and MP3 tags and culling any file who's audio is not up to my standard. We'll see how much I get through today. Yesterday, I finished the templates for my site and with the help of my friend, RobotRogue, I was able to get colors and such down and overall, I like the appearance. Today, I will be adding all the content, SEO and such and hopefully upload later today to the interwebs.

Now one bonus out of being unemployed is the ability to spend more time with my wife and son. My son thinks me being home all day is the best thing ever. A couple months ago, i pulled out some of my LEGO collection from when I was a kid. My son has quickly developed the love for LEGO i have and a keen interest to build, build and build. All day long if he could. He is quickly becoming a LEGO Maniac (but his name ain't Zack). We have built anything from cars, trucks, airplanes to buildings and pirate ships. Our only limitation is the number of blocks we have. Hopefully soon, I will get to the island and grab the rest of my LEGO collection. Plus a friend has recently found a box of over 4000 pieces they were going to get rid of. I am happily taking it off their hands.

Now playing LEGO to me, is one of the best things in the world. Only your imagination (and types of bricks) limit you to what you can make. And if you don't like it, tear it down and start over again. Not many other toys give you that benefit. Being off work is allowing me to play with LEGO even more to the point my childhood love for the tiny little pieces is growing again. I am already eying the LEGO NXT and Mindstorm series. What better to mix the joy of LEGO with some programming. A friend of mine got to make a R2D2 using NXT for a project at BCIT. How cool is that? My son is enjoying this added LEGO time so much he would rather play LEGO now than watch TV or play video games. WIN. Reading books is still at the top of his list but LEGO is rising quickly.

For some people, LEGO is life to them (or pretty damn close). There are people out there who have taken LEGO and applied to the real world and even created jobs out of it. There is even now a LEGO job all aspiring builders can go for, the LEGO Master Builder. Now it is not easy to become a LEGO Master Builder. But if you are artistic and willing to pursue it, you may end up making some real cool things. Now keep in mind, you technically don't need all those qualifications to be an epic builder but it seems those skills have proven highly desirable for a LEGO Master Builder. There are also brick artists like Nathan Sawaya who create sculputres using only LEGO as a medium. This guys collection is over 1.5 millions pieces, yes million!

We have builders of various skill levels and backgrounds who have made everything from a fully functioning PC, a full size Volvo and even a large scale aircraft carrier. You can see more examples by just googling LEGO Master builder. They hold events all over the world, here is just one of many examples on Flickr. One incredible device made out of LEGO showing what can be done, is CubeStormer. This LEGO Mindstorm based invention can solve a Rubix cube in just over 10 seconds. If you don't believe me, watch the video

For any of you "adults" that think you are too old to play with LEGO, let me ask you this one question. Where is it written that when you become an adult, you have to give up your childhood pleasures? Their is a kid in all of us and you only grow up if you want to. The advantage to having kids is you can get away with buying cool toys for your kid, when in reality, it is for you. Come on parents, you know you do. Just admit it.

There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.