10,100 Pages

The official count is in and I accomplished my goal of reading 10,000 pages in one year. In fact, I beat my goal by 100 pages by finishing off Tony Hillerman's Skeleton Man this evening to get myself to my goal. For those who were or weren't keeping track, here is my official list of books that I read in 2010.

Title	Author
The New American Expatriate	William Russell Melton
The Blade Itself	Joe Abercrombie
Before They Are Hanged	Joe Abercrombie
Last Argument of Kings	Joe Abercrombie
All Quiet on the Western Front	Erich Maria LeMarque
Ender's Game	Orson Scott Card
The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul	Douglas Adams
The Prince	Niccolo Machiavelli
Siddhartha	Herman Hesse
A Game of Thrones	George R. R. Martin
Free Prize Inside	Seth Godin
Persuasion	Jane Austen
Heart of Darkness and Other Stories	James Conrad
A Clash of Kings	George R. R. Martin
How the Irish Saved Civilization	Thomas Cahill
Water for Elephants	Sara Gruen
Blood of Elves	Andrzej Sapkowski
Thunderhead	Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
A Storm of Swords	George R. R. Martin
Catcher in the Rye	J.D. Salinger
A Feast for Crows	George R. R. Martin
The Graveyard Book	Neil Gaiman
Skeleton Man	Tony Hillerman

23 books total. I hope everybody else met their reading goals as well this year. I don't think I'm going to set the bar as high next year, mostly because I plan on setting some writing goals for the new year. Happy New Year's everybody!

Dude, Where's My Blog?

First off, let me apologize for the lack of activity as of late. My intent for this post is to explain the lack of content for October/November.

One thing I need everybody to understand is that I love to write. It is one of my favorite hobbies. I love to tell stories, share my experiences with others, and make people laugh. This is why I'm not shy about sharing the "Stupid Things I've Done." I know that I'm not the only person that does stupid things, I just post those stupid things on the internet - which may be stupid in it's own right.

So why the lack of content?

There are two real reasons that I have not posted anything over the last two months. The first is that blogging is much harder than I originally thought it would be. When I committed myself to posting new content every day, I didn't realize how much effort it would take coming up with new content, writing it, and revising it to publishable standards.

Secondly, my international adventure has ceased to be an adventure and has become a chore. This happened around September when I worked in excess of 14 hours for 24 straight days. I burned out on the project and Ireland. The excitement of Ireland as dissipated. I miss my family.

When writing becomes work and one lacks inspiration, it makes it extremely difficult to do. Since I already have a day job, I am not motivated to work another.

I suppose I could have claimed that I've been working crazy hours to get the project live. The truth is that the go-live was smooth and uneventful (just the kind I like). We're live on SAP in Germany and working towards a Northern Ireland pilot in February.

So what's the deal?

I'm going to attempt to make this fun for me again blog at a "hobby level." What does that mean? I'm not sure I know. It does mean that I will post more, but frequency and length of posts are still up in the air. I hope that you all enjoy and keep reading. I'll do my best to keep posting.