Another year ends, and another will start in a few hours. Tempus fugit they say...
While checking my blog archives (around 6 years blogging, not bad), I noticed that the last months my post rate has gone down to as much as 1 per week and not every week.
The reasons are varied, mostly being the lack of time + having a NDA at my job. We do really cool things but is hard to grab enough free time to think and build a simpler example, not doing exactly the same, non-disclosing anything I shouldn't...
My daily job is intense and great but I have few days of "light tasks". Learning new technologies, frameworks and architectures quite frecuently, usually with a deeper level I was used to do, as here we're talking huge amounts of everything, in the end means being more tired at night and either wanting to rest/read or to do lightweight tasks like writing game/film reviews or playing games/watching movies instead.
I also now have 3 blogs, plus two other ones in which I participate (and do the technical administration and improvements). Sum to that a small Wordpress site (right now to do some PHP coding, in the future might even be of some use) and maintaining Kartones.Net (lately requiring less time because is working fine, truth said), and you might make an idea.
I'm happy that some of blogs are gaining a good momentum (Vicio Como Monos 175k pageviews in 10 months of existence and being a spanish non-professional reviews blog) and others like La Web De Programación progressing to numbers like 5 million pageviews in two years (since I built the visit counters and placed them), this blog 1.5 million, or the funniest thing, my RPG uber-geek The Elder Thoughts having surpassed 0.5 million PVs just talking about comics, miniatures, fantasy books, boardgames... Internet is a magic place in that things you think not much people will read can actually be of interest to someone.
I have cool stuff in progress, part of it both .NET and PHP, part miscellaneous rants, and part a new personal web project I have semi-started (I'm coding a 0.0.1 experiment version but not every day) and who will probably supply me with some blog post ideas, but first comes performing well at work.
I am reading books so the concept of my personal book reviews will still be present. Game development has sadly been freezed until further notice, I have many things to do and I prefer some traditional development first, then focus someday on finally doing a decent enough game. My pile of pending books kept growing this year so one commitment for 2011 is reading a bunch of them per quarter, even if that means less coding.
Then add the Real Life™ obligations and the personal commitment of resting a bit from computers from time to time (whenever is reading more bools, playing boardgames or any other hobby). Many times I wish I hade more spare time so I have to reorganize and prioritize better the personal tasks.
I know sometimes I'm a bit unsocial, although many times are either my worries to finish things or my terrible memory (Google Calendar + TODO lists help a lot, but only if you write on them) but I also should take more care about having beers with my friends so I hope that will improve. I don't forget my friends, is just that I get too busy I end up without time :/
Finally, I'm also open to suggestions, critics about contents of this blog... Any ideas of what you would like me to write more about?
Have a nice end of the year and embrace 2011 with health, motivation and good thoughts.