20150815.0553

I am doing better today with the early-rising than was true yesterday; I was up at a quarter to five. (Part of why is that the Mrs. kneed me firmly in the ass as she shifted in her sleep. I know it was unintentional, as was the poke in the face I received when I shifted in response, but that does not mean either event was comfortable--and discomfort vitiates against sleep.) I have already done a fair bit of reading on the day, taking in my usual media, and I will soon be settling in to take care of some of the freelance writing I know I need to do. (I write "some" because I know that Ms. 8 will rise before I can get it done, and the Mrs. will head off to her half-day of Saturday work, and I cannot attend to my professional tasks while attending to my paternal; the latter demand too much attention for me to continue the former while they are in progress.) So that much is to the good.

Also to the good is what I have been teaching myself as I have been working on my revised professional website. In addition to using it for its explicitly stated purposes, I have been using it as a way to teach myself more HTML coding. Freelance work has obliged me to learn basic tags; the new site does not demand I learn more, but it prompts me to it, and I feel I have benefited from the experience. I am not sufficiently proficient in the language to list it among my professional skill-set (at least, not without qualifiers), but I am learning, and I am positioned to learn more, and that pleases me greatly. Maybe, maybe I can parlay it into some kind of job opportunity later on, particularly if things align such that I can take more formal instruction. (That I am a believer in more formal instruction should be obvious.)

As far as that parlaying goes, though...I need to be sure that my job-hunt materials are current, and as I have looked over a few of them, it occurs to me that I need to update them. It would be a good thing to do while the first cup of coffee leaches into my system; it is easy enough work to do, and it is productive in the way that weekend work needs to be. For while I know that some will say I need to rest a bit, to relax against the threat of burnout, I know that 1) I have not got much of that luxury, for reasons noted above, and 2) I am more at ease working than not. I begrudge myself my idle time; I do not feel it a good model to present to Ms. 8 that I "lean and loaf at my ease," as one poet puts it. But I acknowledge burnout; my solution is to work at "easy" upkeep work, such as updating my various online professional profiles. I may not have the content on each of them that I should like--I ever and always need to write more--but that does not mean I cannot ensure that each bit of what I do have online is as it needs to be. Doing so is strangely restful.