Back to work

I had lunch with the bestie on Wednesday, something that is always fun and never happens often enough.

The conversation meandered across topics, like the best ones do, but a couple of important things came up.  One, I helped him realize that some of the mania he's going through is almost certainly due to stress (whereas my ADHD and OCD ramp up when I get stressed out, his mania ramps up) that he wasn't necessarily directly aware of.

Two, we were talking about my going back to school and such.  And he said something that is probably important.  I was going on about the SpaceX landing and KSP and some of the math from last semester.  A few minutes later, he said, "I want you to realize something.  I've seen you display interest in things and ideas and geek out about stuff, but I've never seen you get actually animated and excited about anything.  Until you start talking about going to school."

Bear in mind, this is someone who has been my best friend for about 15 years now.  He's right, of course - I don't really get passionate about anything.  I have a lot of interests, but they're casual.  I'm an information junkie, so learning new things is just something I do.  But I've started shifting from anxiety-freefall about school to actually being excited about it.  I find myself smiling when I think about classes (which start next week).

This is certainly going to be an interesting year.

I have decided, however, I need to get back into taking time off.  Even if I'm not traveling anywhere, just having vacation time when I'm not worried about work is important.  This last week was great.  I didn't get in the car from Monday afternoon until Saturday noon (and that was to go get an oil change).  Now, with school, it's going to get a little weird, but it's definitely something I need to do.

Oh, and today (well, yesterday, really) is my 5-year anniversary at the current job.  Yay for that, I guess :)

Also, renewing my lease (technically, it's up in March), which has me thinking about planning my eventual move.  2.5 years isn't really that long a time, and the next lease is for 14 months, making it come due at the end of June in 2017.  At that point, it'll be a year or so until I'm hopefully off to college.  Weird to be planning for such a thing this far in advance, but it's what we do.