Man, Sundays are wonderful. There is no better day of the week than Sunday. I just can't say enough good things about Sundays.
Every Sunday I crawl out of bed sometime between 9:00 and 10:30. I hop into the shower first thing, followed by a shave and other typical morning routine type stuff. By this time my stomach is beginning to growl and my ferret Dallas is wide awake and ready to play. That means it's off to the kitchen to start the coffee and some breakfast. I don't actually get down and play with Dallas early in the morning because I simply haven't got the patience for it so early in the day, but he seems to think dodging in and out between my legs while I cook is fun enough, so we're both happy.
Breakfast on Sunday morning invariably consists of the aforementioned coffee and a three egg omelette with cheddar, bacon, green pepper and onion. Sometimes the peppers are replaced with mushrooms. Nobody else seems to think this sounds very good, but I absolutely love it. The boost this breakfast gives me is incredible; Sunday mornings simply aren't complete without it.
I usually finish my breakfast around 11:00 or 11:30 and get started on something productive. Sometimes being productive consists of working on gaming materials, sometimes it means working on web pages and sometimes it means working on this newsletter. I almost never do homework before eight o'clock on Sunday evenings. Homework mainly gets done on other days because Sundays are set aside for doing things I actually enjoy. Usually, I have quite a bit to do on Sundays. For instance, today I have to write this column, edit some submissions and get things prepared for the release of this issue. I also have to defrost my icebox today, and a little later this evening I'll mosey on out to the grocery store. After that I have homework to do. That's a fairly busy day, especially considering that all of this will be interspersed with meals, a stream of e-mails to my half-dozen accounts, occasional phone calls and other typical day-to-day things. Basically, I'm busy.
When I was younger my parents used to tell me I had it easy. I had few real responsibilities, I didn't have to pay the bills, yadda, yadda. "When you get older," they said, "you'll find out what busy is."
Man, were they right. Whoever came up with the idea that life should be filled with responsibility and work needs to be dragged out in the street and shot.
I recall a time, not too awfully long ago, when I was dealing with about thirty e-mails a day. I thought I was busy then, and to a certain extent I was. I also had classes, work and other little responsibilities; having to take care of thirty e-mail messages takes a measurable chunk of time out of your day, but I would have loved it if I were getting more like fifty a day. I never thought I would see the day when I would be thankful to get as few as five or ten.
I was unlucky this quarter at school. I managed to select four classes with professors who just love piling work on their students. Because of this and the freelance work I now do for a living, I only do three things during any given day: go to class, run errands and sit in front of my computer. I used to go see a movie almost every weekend, now it's been two months since the last time I caught a flick. I average five to ten e-mail messages a day at the moment, and I couldn't be happier about it. I know what busy is now. Busy is when you have a dozen things to get done on any given day and knowing you'll only finish nine of them. Busy is not even thinking about going out for a beer with the fellas or playing a game of Rogue Spear over the net with your buddy. Busy is spending your whole day writing code, answering e-mails, running errands and scheduling upcoming projects. Busy is getting an e-mail from someone who wants you to work on a project for them - something you would normally do in a heartbeat - and having to say, "I'm sorry, but I really don't have time."
For some reason, a lot of people have a hard time understanding what that phrase means. Busy means just that - busy. It doesn't mean "I don't want to" or "I don't care about your puny desires." It just means "I'm too busy right now."
Busy people - people like myself, like our webmaster James, my associate editor Elissa, and many other people I know who do freelance or contract-based work - have lives and responsibilities of their own. A lot of folks don't seem to understand that. There seems to be this mentality that because we do things which are both visible and entertaining, not to mention free for all to use, that must mean we have time to spare. While that may sometimes be the case, I can tell you with absolute certainty that it is by no means the rule.
Time is a precious commodity these days. For those of us who work long or irregular hours, we have to learn to budget that time wisely. We have to prioritize. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices, too. In my case, I recently had to tell someone I didn't have the time to work on a unit write-up they wanted me to do for the Shadowrun Military Project. I wish I did have the time, but I just don't. I've also had to indefinitely shelf a map project that I've been wanting to do for the past three months. Maybe I'll have time to do one of them as the quarter draws to a close next month, who knows?
I've had quite a few people ask me for quite a few things so far this year. While I would love to do most of them, it just isn't possible. Some people seem to take offense to that, and it bothers me. I know I'm not alone in this, either. Other busy people I know have made the same complaint to me in confidence - they don't have time to do every little project everyone else wants them to do, and some people get very upset when you tell them no.
Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't seem very considerate. In fact, it seems downright selfish. Perhaps I'm biased, but I think it's unfair to the people doing the work. Imagine how you would feel if you were the sysop of a message board or a volunteer webmaster and someone sent you a rude e-mail chewing you out for not implementing this or that feature yet. If you've ever been on the receiving end of this before, you know what I'm talking about. It doesn't make you want to help that person out, does it? What's worse is when you're the only person who can do the updating; it makes the process take that much longer.
It's tough doing all that work by yourself, and even tougher when you have other, more pressing responsibilities to attend to. A lot of people don't seem to understand that Internet sysops, webmasters, writers and editors all have lives outside of their pet projects. Most of us also don't get paid for what we do. We do what we do because we enjoy it, but selfish users can oftentimes make us wish we were doing something else with our time. So please, the next time you feel the need to chew someone out for not updating your favorite feature or addressing your specific problem, try to remember all this. I may not have said it eloquently, but I've said it sincerely. I'm too busy not to be sincere.
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