Snowy pines

Lazy days are a mixed bag. It is a chance to rest up of course, just lazing around unless it's either a dark winters night or a rainy spring afternoon is really wasteful and unproductive. Usually during the lazier days I'll try to catch up on some reading or maybe watch and empty out some of the tv programs on the DVR.

The only exceptions to that are the aforementioned dark winters night and rainy spring afternoons. For those particular days it's best to brew up some hot chocolate or tea and indeed just laze about watching the weather unfold. Sometimes I think it would be wonderful to curl up with poetry, but I have no idea even where to start with that, so I tend to nap. :)

Angel

Back in the day I caught a whiff of real creative rewards when I was busy programming computers to do tasks. Mostly they were classwork programs but a few were based on my own pursuits. The high from creating these things was palpable however those days have passed. I don't really have room in my life to program anymore. It's given way to writing, although for that it's mostly just me writing opinion pieces and social networking screes on Google Plus. The rewards aren't as profound as they were when I was at the end of a long programming task, but they give a little pleasure.

Now that I think about it some more, I would also say that being creative at my work, writing novel SQL code lies somewhere in between computer programming and writing. I value the time I have to devote to it and the reward is almost as rich as it was when I was writing computer programming code.

I really think that the longer something takes, the more you put into a project the more you get out of it. The rewards for a multiweek computer programming project, toiling away with debugging and testing edge conditions and refining the code leads to a huge blaze of rewarding feelings when the final product is running correctly.

As for inspiration, that usually comes from necessity. Mostly that is either my own curiosity, my opinions, or some task that is assigned to me at work for some grander purpose that I usually don't understand.

Money

I save money by keeping a budget. The budget provides a framework of knowing. Knowing when it is best for me to say no to buying something. If I have gone without, and I suffer for it then that is a lesson that I needed to learn. I can make trade offs, something I want goes by the wayside to pay for something I need. I need food and shelter, the rest? Mostly wants. A need can only be deferred for a short time, but a want could be eliminated altogether if times are rough and money is tight.