Where have I been? Walking around outside taking pictures in the warmest weather since early November. When not enjoying the sunshine, I have been spending my time doing contract work at the Steelcase University .

So far the life of a contract worker is treating me well. I am immersed in challenging work with extremely talented people and I am my own boss.

Though I could potentially be buried in Steelcase work for a good long time I have just joined Business Networking International , with the idea that I should not have all of my eggs in one basket, businesswise. I was kind of wary when I first heard of it, but when I went to a meeting as a visitor I walked out with the cards of half a dozen people who needed some web work done.

Does all this mean I will be too busy to have fun? Hell No! I will try to keep my hours down to ~30 a week, once I get settled into the new schedule. And, hopefully, a fair bit of that will be done from home, or from various cafes and bars with wireless internet connections.

I have begun work on Whirling Vector Shapes of Doom, version 2. Updated graphics, tweaks to the gameplay, and optimization to smooth out the animations. And maybe some sound.

The web design class at Kendall College is sliding into the crazy last weeks of the semester. I have not made any of my students cry yet, but I still have a month to turn up the heat.

Yeah… life is good.

It has been ten days since I walked out of my former place of employment. The deep-down sleep deprivation is wearing off, and some of my friends have commented that I look “younger”. I certainly feel better than I have in a long time. I guess I didn’t realize exactly how poisonous stress is until I removed the major source.

So what have I been doing? Reading. Writing. Watching movies. A little coding and a lot of working out. Already people are finding out that I am “on the market”, so to speak, and the requests for web work are beginning to trickle in.

I have more time to prepare for the Kendall class, so my students are getting a better education, or at least more precise beatings.

I have made no long-term plans. I intend to make no long-term plans until the beginning of summer, at the earliest. The next four months are for me to try to regain all those things I lost over the past fifteen years of too much work packed into too little time.

In case none of you heard, I quit my job yesterday. I will spend the next indeterminate amount of time doing contract work and freelancing.

But first, I am going to sleep in on Monday.