I am currently involved in a project on E2: to write 100 write-ups in a month. This write-up right here will be #76 this month, meaning that I am ahead of schedule for completing my goal. I still have to keep up my pace, though, since I will still have to average two a day for the rest of the month to reach my goal. And, to be honest, my impulse to write has understandably died down, somewhere around the 50 mark.
I didn't set about noding at this pace just to show off. My initial impulse was that I wanted to complete iron noder, which I have done every year since 2008. But I didn't know what my schedule would be like this year, so I decided to complete it as fast as possible in case I was pulled away. I had, it seemed, an offer of employment bubbling on the horizon, and it might involve traveling and doing things that don't involve staring at the internet for five hours a day. So I worked through it in six days, but figured that as long as I had gotten that far, I might as well keep going.
Somewhere in here, I also found out that I got the job I wanted. Not just any old job, but a real adult job: I will be an instructor at a college. More details of this will be made soon. It might be thought that since I am moving on up in the world, I should focus on that, instead of spending my energy collecting imaginary points on a website. In some way, though, I have connected my goal of completing this challenge with my success in my future employment. This has become a vision quest of sorts, where I challenge myself, and my successful completion of my goal will be a good luck charm in the coming year.
I also have a problem in that I am treading water here in Montana until I move to Oregon for my job. And it is November in Montana, a time when the possibilities of outdoor activities are severely curtailed. In other words, I don't have much to do but sit inside and wait for the future.
The internet has also been highly boring for me lately. All the usual channels of communication on the internet have one problem or another. Facebook, which I use for my broadest social messaging, always gives me quick and plentiful responses, but they tend to be thoughtless and transitory. Google Plus, which showed some promise at first, doesn't really have much community or conversation on it. Livejournal, which I have been using for a decade, used to be where I would post the most personal things. But Livejournal's community is fragmented and there is not much commenting or posting. That leaves E2, which has problems of its own. I remember when there were days when I could get on the internet, go to three different sites at once, and get carried away in a rush of conversation. Connections and ideas flowed freely. I don't know what happened to that, it could just be that I have become jaded to it, but all I know right now is that I am having a hard time finding a place to put my energy and creativity, internet-wise.