As I get older I find that I can get grumpy easier and then stay grumpy for no real discernible reason.

Case in point, today I went out to my office and it stank. It *really* stank, and that made me grumpy.

The thing is, it stank on friday so I cleaned it all out all the trashcans, sprayed a ton of air freshener, and got rid of the smell - or so I thought. It turns out that someone (don’t worry about who, they will be teased unmercifully on monday) left a styrofoam takeout container on their desk early last week. Apparently it got pushed aside and covered up by some papers and thus forgotten. Let’s just say it’s contents weren’t easily recogizable as “food” today when I found it.

So there’s the thing - I smelled an aweful stink in my office and that made me grumpy. But then I found the source, binned it (outside of course) and frebreeze’d up the office enough to make it livable again. Yet, I didn’t drop the grumpy. I had been happy all day, and then it was BAM grumpy. It actually took me semi-snapping at my wife for me to realize that I was grumpy and then traced it back to the stink.

I have to wonder why this is happening more and more. I mean, I know my dad is this way (or at least was when I was growing up - these days I when I see him he’s playing with my sons so he’s always in a good mood!). Anyway it looks like it’s just something I’ll need to work on.

First off - I have managed to play some lately! First I did some fun spiking in Flash figuring out some interesting solutions to a problem I was having (I’ll post more about that soon on the Automata Studios blog.). Then, this weekend I managed to spend some time digging in with some electronics. We currently have a project that requires a lot of hardware integration and I needed to build a debugging module for all of it (let’s just say I didn’t want to setup a full HVAC setup!). I ended up designing and building the whole thing - and it worked the first time! Holy cow!

It was a lot of fun really defining the problem and then scouring the net for the information I needed. I re-learned a lot of basic electronic theory that I learned back in high school and then went further to really finally understand capacitors, diodes, rectifiers and even a bit of AC theory. Oh - and I found out I haven’t fully lost my soldering skills too!

I keep forgetting that if I take the time to write down each and every task I need to do in order to complete a larger goal I actually get things done a lot quicker.

I feel like an idiot as I write down dozens of these teeny-tiny tasks - it just feels silly. But then as I work, the rush of breaking out the red pen and slashing out a task drives me to do the next one, and the next one, and then before I know it, I’m done. I think I’m going to start calling it the potato chip method… cause you can’t just do one!

There are times in which I feel like my own psycological state is a sort of complicated electronic device for which there is no manual. Things seem to run fine for quite some time and they BAM! things sort of break down or change in a unexpected way.

For example, this week I’m in Brighton, UK at the Flash on the Beach conference and for the first time in a long time I’ve been able to actually attend a good number of sessions. My talk was on the morning of the first day so I knew I would be able to do this and was looking forward to the warm glow of inspiration that accompanies an awesome presentation. Seeing the works of Grant Skinner, Eric Natzke, Robert Hodgin, et al used to always be a great way to get the creative juices flowing.

This time was a bit different. The juices flowed, but on top of them poured a thick slick of self-doubt and self-criticism. Back when I started in this industry I spent probably too much of my time doing just want I wanted and what interested me. I, quite frankly, wasn’t exactly a model employee for my first few employers. I did good work, but I wasn’t exactly the most productive worker.

Today I own my own company and I bust my tail for probably too many hours every week to make it succeed. I write a lot of code and put out a lot of projects that I’m proud of… but very few of they bear the stamp of both my hard work and creativity. Most of the time I’m just implementing others ideas.

When I do come up with some idea independent of client work I start on it but never come close to finishing - the real world gets in the way.

The fact of the matter is that I forgot how to play. The result of which is that I feel disconnected from my own personality - if that makes any sense. I’m still a generally happy person, but I feel the shadow of self-doubt creeping more along the edges every day.

As I try to learn to play again I’m very aware that I must make sure I’m always doing it for the right reason. It’s very easy for me to fall into the trap of doing things so that others will like me. It’s very easy to want to do things for acceptance and use that acceptance as a measure of self worth. But if you start chasing that snake you never stop. I need to play and create for me.