The other day, my friend Dangermoose asked me on Twitter, “Do you have staff? How are you doing all these things?”  It’s true; I have been a busy, busy bee lately.  This year has been full of new things, and in the last couple of weeks I’ve been especially busy: getting ready for my 12K, applying for jobs, sending out articles, starting a new blog, and (oh, yeah!) teaching my regular fall schedule of four courses at the University.

I am ready for Christmas break; I ain’t gonna lie.  At times this semester has been exhausting.  I have barely even had time for television.  TELEVISION! That time-honored tradition in the KO household, that thing I could spend hour after hour after hour doing.  Well, I feel as if I’ve barely seen any television this fall, and what I have seen has been mainly background noise.

Another favorite activity to get cut from this fall’s schedule:  happy hours and nights out at the bar.  I seem to remember doing those things (and drinking those whiskeys) far more often last school year, but this fall I think that, outside from seeing several movies at the theater, I’ve gone out socially less than a dozen times.

If anything had to fall on life’s cutting room floor, I think going out to bars and watching television were probably the two best things to go.  It’s left me time for things that are much more positive in my life — all that healthy living and career advancement type stuff, yawn if you must — and stopped me from wasting hour after hour after hour.  Not that having a social life and a cocktail and kicking back with a little TV are necessarily bad, but if those things account for the majority of a person’s time, they might be, you know?  And that did account for most of my life outside of work for quite a while.  Whenever I ran into someone who innocently asked what I’d been up to that day, I never used to have an answer.

I came across this tumblr blog recently, Ben Does Life.  It’s written by this guy who has dedicated the past year to losing over 140 pounds and becoming a super-fit, marathon-running triathlete dude.  Inspiring stuff, to say the least.  At any rate, he has written about how before this year started, he used to spend most of his time playing video games alone in his room, allowing his relationships and health to pay the price.  Now, though,  his fitness quest has him out there, in the world, doing life.  I love that idea.

I like to think that I’m doing the same thing; doing life.  That the hours I don’t spend downing whiskey sodas at the bar or watching marathons of America’s Next Top Model reruns are opening the door for more meaningful things to happen in my world.  That, in fact, my world has gotten a little bit bigger since last year; that there is more room, more opportunity, more happiness.

While I’m more than ready for my schedule to ease up a bit over the break, I’m equally ready to take stock of where I have been this year and figure out where I’m going next.  It can be exciting, sometimes, life.