I’ve been nose-to-the-grindstone focused on the all-important day job for a while now. (What’s new?)

Setting aside projects like this one to facilitate evening overtime on that is easy enough to do in the short term … until the weight of thinking about all the other important stuff I’m not doing becomes too great to bear.

Writing here has been a tremendously helpful and valuable outlet for me, and in times of stress I too easily forget that. Articulating and posting these thoughts decreases my stress levels greatly, and seems to do an even better job of that when I can keep at it regularly. The gloom is hardest to endure when you’re doing nothing about it. Stress is the mind’s little way of saying: Get up, man! We’ve got work to do!

Occasionally in writing here, I even manage to come up with stuff that, when I read it later in moments of despair or uncertainty, lifts my spirits. The posts I’ve written so far in my “The Way Out” series have been a prime example of that. I’ve come back to them several times lately (especially the inaugural post), finding some needed comfort in the thoughts and perspective I’d put to the page, while at the same time contemplating what’s next in this line of exploration.

Feeling better is all well and good, but of course the main goal is to figure things out. I’ve had hope that my thinking on this might be of help to others who find themselves facing the same cultural dilemma, and that in the course of working through the details verbally I might find some new answers. Take a look while you’re here, and see if where I’m going with this doesn’t have some relevance for you. There are key practical mechanics to work out, and I welcome ideas as to how to tackle them.