I make no bones about it, I am not a relaxed person. The Virgo Month of Leisure is an important part of remembering to take some time off. Of course, since I don't have just one job to close the door on, the idea of "time off" is amusing at best and at worst preposterous. Let's see how I've been doing at this leisure thing over the past few years...

• 2005: trip to New York, trip to Indiana
  
• 2004: Slow month, possibly the first since this all started.
  
• 2003: I move to Vermont full-time, I start a new job.
  
• 2002: Greg on the scene, I am working on a book.
  
• 2001: I start a postcard project, we know what happened after that.
  
• 2000: Burning Man followed by the hospital
  
• 1999: driving cross-country & my barn roof blows off
  
• 1998: in Guatemala
  

I really don't think of myself as that busy, but it's been years since I took anything like a few weeks off without bringing work with me. Since I started working with MetaFilter, it's a rare weekend that I don't put in at least a few hours. And yet, all of my jobs and work don't usually seem like WORK. When I've got a deadline on a project and I have to really shift into hyperfocus mode then I feel busy, but the rest of the time, not so much. I see that as some sort of measure of success, being able to get published, go travelling, get paid, meet people, learn things, live someplace excellent, and have it seem like no work at all. Now I'll work on sleeping better.

Roommate update: it looks like I have a new roommate, though I haven't met him yet. He's a first year law student from Haiti and he drives the same sort of car as Ola. I'm sure there will be a bumpy transition for the two months that him, me and Ola live in the house at the same time. She should be heading out on her Peace Corps adventure sometme after the election and then it will just be me and him. This means we'll have sort of a full house for a few months, so we'll be down one guestroom.