It’s been an interesting weekend.

Office update

I got the doorway framed for the office. Next, I need to box in the heating duct running along the ceiling and install insulation in the outside walls. I’ve also got to decide how to deal with a strange plumbing situation that intersects the office ceiling: The previous owners have cut some copper pipe and replaced it with some plastic tubing. I don’t know why — it’s not intuitively obvious what they were trying to do. The only theory I have is that a pipe sprung a leak and they didn’t know how to solder, so they went with plastic tubing instead.

I feel I should get the tubing out of there because it’s much more likely to have problems in the future than copper.

Aside from that, the only thing left to do before I can start putting up wallboard is the electrical. Of course, this is a major point of contemplation for me. How do I want to light the office? How many wall jacks do I want to have and in what configuration? How many data and voice jacks do I want? Do I want to run a couple coax lines in for television?

I learned a lot from finishing the basement in our house in Hyrum. I know I need to think about this stuff now and not later.

Feeling stressed

I think stress has been sneaking up on me. I had to kind of vegetate on Friday and not do much because I felt overwhelmed. I took it easy this weekend.

I’m probably not too different from other people. When I notice stress in my life, I take a look at the big picture of everything I’ve got to content with and it just seems unbearable. That leads me into a bit of a depression because I don’t feel confident I can deal with everything.

Usually, I snap out of it.

Let me expound on some of the things that have me stressed lately.

Iodynamics has been real busy lately. If every month could be as busy as February has been, I wouldn’t be worried at all about my ability to provide for my family’s well-being. The problem is, it tends to come in waves... and when the tide is low, it gets scary.

Hopefully, we;’re learning as we go. I think part of the problem we’ve had in Iodynamics is we stop pursuing new jobs when we’re busy with current work. This results in less work to do when current work is finished. Not good for business. We’re trying harder to keep new business coming in while we work on current projects.

Mike has been working on a business plan we can use to solicit investors. We’re not looking for a lot of investment - just some capital to help us do better marketing, new product development, and manage the salary of a salesperson.

But, yeah, Iodynamics has been keeping me very busy and I haven’t been staying as organized as I like. If I concentrate on being more organized, it won’t get away from me. I need to spend more time using and reviewing my schedule and task list in my PDA. I should make sure I consult my PDA before I commit to anything new.

Speaking of scheduling, I need to communicate and coordinate my schedule better with my family. Christine gets frustrated with me coming and going at random. She never knows if or when I’m going to be home. That makes it a lot more difficult for her to plan anything.

Christine’s been searching for jobs for me to apply for. We both miss the nice salaries I’ve had while employed by other companies. Having that kind of salary again would really help us out in paying down the debt we’ve accumulated by fixing up the house. That’s not to say we’re in a lot of debt. We’re not. But because our income doesn’t currently give us a lot of breathing room, debt is a concern.

The job market for Perl programmers and Linux system administrators has not been very good in the area for the last several months. It has improved over the last couple of months, but it’s still nothing like it was a couple years ago. When a job comes up, I’ll apply. Often, I get called in for an interview. These interviews are really nerve wracking.

I’m sure some people can just go into a job interview and think of it as a social event: Just getting to know the company and letting the company get to know you. No pressure, right? Well, I beat myself over the head about job interviews. I’m constantly asking myself if I want to work for the company. I worry about representing myself truthfully. I worry about how to talk about Iodynamics. I worry about what kind of message I’m sending to my Iodynamics partners if I took a job. What kind of message would I be sending to myself? Basically, I worry myself silly.

I had a couple interviews this last week. I cancelled on one I had Wednesday because the company looked like a bunch of e-mail spammers using terms like “e-mail broadcasting” and “list fulfillment” to describe their services. It just sounds like a company that’s willing to blur the line between what is ethical and not by what is justifiable from a marketing and sales standpoint. I hate those types of people.

I had another interview scheduled for Friday and I cancelled on that one too just because I didn’t want to deal with it.

I’m sure that’s a big part of my problem. I have all these “principles” that get in the way of me just rendering services to get a paycheck. Why can’t I just be someone’s whore (in the figurative sense) and let them use me and pay me and not worry about what it is I’m doing and how I’m doing it? Oh... that thought just stresses me out.

I’m getting sleepy. I’ll have to resume this thread another time... maybe.