In the Pipeline

Recently completed projects:

1. Finished my 2000 taxes.
2. Drafted my fantasy baseball team.
3. Sold most of my boxes of comics I've been trying to sell to my comics shop.

Short-term projects (i.e., "things I need to do"):

1. Make an appointment to take my car in for a checkup.
2. Get a dental checkup.
3. Activate my E*Trade OptionsLink account for my Apple stock options.
4. Investigate my 1999 taxes and file an amendment if necessary.
5. Pick a new Primary Care Provider for my health plan.

Long-term projects in progress:

1. Writing Web pages about the comic book Planetary.
2. Collecting all of Sports Night on videotape.
3. Collecting stuff. I do that, you know.
4. Working out. Losing weight. Or trying to, anyway.
5. Sell some of my CDs to Rasputin Music.

Projects I want to pursue when time permits:

1. Buy a home.
2. Revise my journal index to use META tags in HTML to be parsed by a Perl script.
3. Write Web pages about Jethro Tull.
4. Write Web pages about a few of my other favorite music artists.
5. Write some fiction.

This doesn't even take into account hobbies I no longer pursue due to lack of time, like drawing, or due to lack of convenience, like bicycling.

Monique would probably keel over if she knew, but I even used to write poetry. On occasion. A long time ago.

I'm a consumer. I'd like to be more of a producer, but being a producer is a lot harder than being a consumer. And I'm so adept at consuming.

It seems like most people I know have this much stuff going on in their lives. I think one of the problems with being in your 30s and single is that you have a lot of free time to work on these sorts of projects, and they become such a big part of your life that it becomes hard to give any of them up. That's one of the things I do fear about dating: Meeting someone I really like but who has radically different interests from me, and having to give up hobbies in order to have a fulfilling relationship. I want it all, which is the main reason I'm reluctant to date women who don't have interests that overlap with mine.

It's also a reason why the notion of having kids croggles my mind. Progeny are the ultimate time sink, as far as I can tell. It seems like you have to virtually give up all of your other waking-but-not-at-work interests in order to raise them. I don't know if I could do it.