On My Mind Today

2026/03/18

I had another dry St Patrick's Day. Last year, I did't drink for the holiday because I was having a "Dry Year" as I didn't drink at all in 2025. I'm back to drinking this year a little and pondered if I wanted to go back to my tradition of having an Irish Whisky shot with a pint of Guinness. I had been doing that for years before last year. But I ended up not doing it again this year. There's no particular reason other than I don't keep alcohol at home anymore. I had thought about picking some up for the holiday when I was out and about on Sunday. But my diversion to having lunch by the sea changed that plan. I don't feel like I lost out on this one, though. My tradition of doing that didn't even start with me as a thing I wanted to do. So, I didn't miss it yesterday. But I did get to thinking about an Irish Coffee and wished I had one of those...LOL That's basically a shot of Irish Whisky in coffee. Or a shot of Irish Cream; which I don't typically use cream in my coffee anyway.

In order to take Friday off work for my birthday, I'm actually working a 10x4 work week. But technically, I've worked 11 hours Monday and Tuesday. I worked 10 hours today. So tomorrow, I'll just work a normal 8. But then I'll have Friday off. Ideally, I would love to work a 10x4 workweek all the time. I would want to work Monday and Tuesday, have Wednesday off, and then work Thursday and Friday. When needed, I would shift that day off if I needed a 3 day weekend. And I'd have to adjust on weeks with holidays or when I need to take actual paid time off. But that flexibility would be amazing. Since I don't take time off the typical way anyway, I think that schedule would work best for me and my productivity. But for now, I'm grateful for these occasional opportunities to work a 10x4 week. I'll be doing this again 1 week in April and 1 week in May.

Deep down, though, I think I'd like to go back to working for myself. I need to have money to do things and to live. But I miss the days when I ran my own business before I dove into the corporate world. The money wasn't great. But the flexibility was amazing. Work-life balance was on my terms. And I didn't have to do the useless annual reviews. Performance reviews and money aren't my motivation. It's the work that I do, the people I work for, and the flexibility in me being me at work that drive my productivity. I'm grateful to have a job that I enjoy and a supervisor that gets me. He is the reason I have the flexibility I actually do have now; for weeks like this as an example. So I am by no means complaining about my current job. I just long for the day when I decide to finally leave corporate America.

I need to rethink how I do this blog. During my hiatus, and now that I'm back to it, I've realized there is some unnecessary friction to how I manage this. Adding content isn't as simple as clicking a "new" button and then clicking "publish" when I'm ready. I think it's time for me to get to a point with this so that it really is that simple. I've overcomplicated how I manage this. It's been over 2 years now. It shouldn't be this hard to publish simple content. That's one of the reasons I haven't kept up with any other parts of this website. I have so many things I would love to publish on my website. So I want to simplify the process to better motivate me to do it and keep up with it.

I'll be going up to Indiana for an extended time starting next Friday or Saturday. I haven't yet decided which day I'll do the first leg of the drive. And I'll not be coming home until Tuesday, April 7th. That will be the week of Malachi's Spring Break off from work. And with Easter being on the 5th, I decided I'd stay and spend the holiday with family this year. Last year I went to my sister's house down here. I don't recall the last time I was in Indiana for Easter. With me being up there, Malachi is planning to spend the weekend with my family too.

We need that time together that week. I'll probably work with him on some art lessons. Not that I know how to teach art. But I know some fundamentals that he doesn't know yet but needs to learn. Creativity is a talent. But art is a skill. He's creative like me. But also like me, he needs to learn the skill of drawing. We'll have other shared experiences that week as well. I'm not sure what all we'll do. But I do know there are some restaurants we need to get to that week...hehehe