However, when I do have a day where I don’t really need to do anything and have the time to spare (like today) I inevitably end up wasting it through watching TV/films, playing on the XBox, or writing blogs like this. I’ve convinced myself that the main problem is that I spend 40+ hours a week in the office looking at one project or another there. This might involve writing actual code (as most of last week did), integrating various components to solve problems that way, performing analysis on what we need to do or any number of other activities, most of which are things I’d need to do on the personal projects. Given this, I guess I’ve been subconsciously avoiding doing anything on them as it seems too much like work.

Of course, by being apathetic in regard to these projects, they’re ever growing in number as I come up with an idea for something that I (or others) might find useful, and therefore add it to the list. A prime example is the Choob functionality I mentioned in passing in my previous entry about Code Style last month (which was a lot of hot air, and no real action), but there are also a whole load of other things that I’ve been thinking about for a while and should probably do something about.

So, what do I do about this? Well, I guess it all comes down to forcing myself to sit down and write some code, rather than wandering off and parking myself in front of the TV for an entire day. With this in mind I’m going to try and set aside a couple of hours each week (be it at the weekend, or one evening), where I can get something written. This will mean that I need to actually think about what needs doing, and break it up into suitable chunks – but that’s something that would need doing anyway if the projects are to avoid spiralling out of control.

I guess if I can manage that, then I should also be able to keep this blog a bit more up to date, especially with progress, so I may even start updating this more often. Of course, it could all fail miserably, so I guess we’ll just have to see!

This has resulted in a strange situation for me, where I’ve found that I’ve become addicted to doing the work. I spent the majority of this bank holiday weekend either in the office or working from home, and I have absolutely no problem with this. I even went so far as to be working at 1:30am on Monday morning, purely because I was awake and in the mood to do some work.

Now, some people would see this as being rather wrong, especially as I don’t get paid any overtime for doing this work. On the other hand, I have no problem with it, as I actually enjoy it (especially with the challenges involved in the project) and I knew what I was getting myself into when I applied for the job.

As the project deadline draws ever closer (the code freeze is in less than a week now) I suspect that I’ll spend even more time working on it, striving for perfection; and I have no problem with this. I’m not sure why I’m so keen at the moment, maybe it’s because I’m enjoying the project more because of the pressure, maybe I’ve just gone insane… who knows. All I know is that I’ve got a week off after the project is out of the way, and then I go into my job for the foreseeable future, where I can only hope that I retain the same enthusiasm as I currently have.