And so 2007, the first year I employed the four-pillars metaphor of organizing my life, draws to a close. The metaphor serves as more of a mnemonic than a scorecard, but let me nonetheless look back and see how well I balanced the year across them.
Dating: Well, yes. The first time I've had a relationship as long as a year, and isn't it just ducky that it happens to line up with the calendar year, too. All is well. (And I don't have much else to say here, because it's not really a bloggy topic.)
Video: It fell short of expectations, though what output I did make was great. The year saw only two Gameshelfs and two Jmac's Arcades. The Arcade receives an update only when I get inspired to spend a day stitching a show together, so its having a pokey pace is fine. But Gameshelf was supposed to see three shows in the first half of the year. However, both episodes we did make were better by a giant leap over the four shows (plus demo reel) that we shot in 2005. The improvement was entirely a matter of better overall planning by the whole crew. It leaves me really looking forward to what we'll do in the coming year, but that's a topic for another post.
Volity: Quite a ride. My relationship with Volity was stone cold through the winter and into spring. I was totally burnt out after throwing my life into it for most of 2006. A cafe conversation with AET re-ignited my interest in leading the web client project myself, and zthen I spent several months completely absorbed in it, culminating in a working pre-Alpha in August. And things haven't exactly stalled there; better to say that we've been caught up in highly devilish detail-work, which was slowed down a lot by my entanglement with personal financial setbacks in the autumn.
Money: Another crazy ride. At the start of the year I figured I'd be working for ITA indefinitely, but by spring I couldn't resist seeing what putting another iron in the fire felt like. So I got an hourly contract job with a remote client, and I liked it, enough so that at the start of the summer I officially started calling myself a software consultant. But I made a mistake in not building up more clients than the one, so when they silently stopped giving me work I was left in the cold. After two months of scrambling, I find myself with several new clients, and looking forward to a new year of self-directed work.
I don't know yet if I want to carry the pillars metaphor into next year. I probably will anyway, out of intertia. It's served me well and my areas of desired focus have not changed much.
2008: Stay the course, except moreso. Unless I don't. I admit to feeling that all my meeples are on the board, if you know what I'm saying. I want to be able to do new kinds of art, too, but I'm so invested that it's hard. We'll see what happens.
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