Well, sorta....

So what the hell's going on? Why'd I leave DA so abruptly? Actually, I was only supposed to be gone for a month, as an experiment, but let's just say the results were interesting.

It's actually a bunch of things. Most notably, my father has dementia. He's in his eighties and while it has been growing on him for quite some time now, during this past year it's as if he has fallen off a cliff. He's grown incredibly weak and frail. He hallucinates wildly. He can't be trusted with anything. It's a bit like having a two hundred pound two-year old doddering about the house. The anti-depressants keep him upbeat, but he's still a hell of a lot of work.

On top of that, last year I wrote a computer program which allows me to keep track of where I spend my time on the computer. Here's what I discovered. Over the past year I have stopped drawing altogether. I no longer blog. I only worked on websites in order to shut them down. I watched about one movie per week and haven't played video games in years. The time I spent writing dwindled to three to four hours a week. Meanwhile, I was spending about one to two hours a day doing nothing but kabitzing on DA.

So. With my father as my memento mori, a reminder that in 40 years I will probably resemble a invalid cross between Jacob Marley and Jerry Garcia, and that I really should get around to doing what I have always meant to do with my life - namely write books - I decided to swear off DA and use that time for pounding out drafts. Surprise. Surprise. My productivity took a huge leap forward, averaging two to three hours a day for about four to six days a week. The experiment was only supposed to last a month, but with numbers that good, it was hard to go back.

Which leads me to my current dilemma. It still is hard to go back. All of this number juggling hasn't left me with any extra free time. It's just shown me that you have to spend your time wisely if you want to do what you want to do. And yet - I miss DA - I admit it, I love this site! But I can't leave my writing behind, so I'm only kinda back. I may never be as active here as I have been in the last few years, but I will be around.