Will Stay Awake For Free Time

I'm sure none of you are asking yourselves "I wonder what's going on in the life of that Know It All guy these days?" so I'll pose the question myself.

My available free time has been totally consumed lately, so much so that I'm creating time by staying up later and later. The last time I went to bed before 3AM was November 20. The Xbox 360 really took a bite out of it and then last week I accepted a little moonlighting project which has eaten the rest. I've also been in a real shit mood lately and have avoided posting about it. And yes, I'm still avoiding it.

On the 360 front, I only play after everyone else has gone to bed, so by default it's keeping me up late. But that's not so much of a change, as I'm always up several hours after everyone else anyway. To illustrate just how much I've been playing, I need to provide a little detail.

For those of you not familiar with the new game system, it has a (brilliant) concept called Achievements. The basic premise is, as you complete certain tasks or milestones in a game, you unlock an Achievement. Achievements are all assigned a certain number of points (some more, some less). These points are tracked on Xbox Live and added up to create your Overall Gamer Score. So for example, if you look at the box on the upper right of this page you'll see I'm currently at 710.

Last night I was playing Zuma and a new Achievement unlocked: the 24 hour Achievement. This means that since November 22, I have spent an entire day of my life playing Zuma!! I've also played some of a few other games and finished the game Kameo as well. Yes folks, I'm that big of a loser.

As for Moonlighting, last week I was approached to create an advertisement for a certain magazine about a certain type of expensive animal. Yeah, I'm being vague, sorry. I've done a few of these before for the same people and always enjoy the work. However this one is a little stressful because it is going to be the entire back cover of the magazine. The ad space cost $10,000. A little pressure there you think?

I'll admit, I've been accused of being creative now and then, but I'm far from being a qualified graphics and print designer (I'm a Software & Web Developer if that tells you anything) so this has really been making me nervous. It has also taken a lot of time to get anywhere. I think I'm already up to about 20 hours since I started last Thursday night. I'm also a really bad business person when it comes to these things. How ever many hours I spend on creating these, I always cut the total in half before I figure the bill. Basically, in the end, I try to charge for the number of hours it would have taken had I gone from Zero to Finished Product with no iterations in between. Partially due to the fact that they are good friends of mine, but also because that's where my confidence lies as a designer.

So you take all that into account and also add in the fact that I still have a full time "real" job and you start to see what my schedule has been like lately. But wait, yes there's more, then you add in the fact that I have a very attentive 2.5 year old. I refuse to let things like this affect the amount/quality of time I spend with her, so I have to keep on top of that as well.

Yeah, I've been busy.