Time Management

I've been doing a poor job of managing my time lately. I've had a lot on my plate on the homefront, but that's really not the issue—I just haven't been focusing. Cases in point are the four partially-written posts that I will likely leave abandoned on the Blogger dashboard. Instead of finishing them, here's a brief update on my current projects:

• Had an interview for a job I really, really want this week. Keeping my fingers crossed and my hopes reasonable.
• Continuing to look for and apply for other jobs.
• Continuing to read Challenges for Game Designers, and thinking about trying to design a board game as a side project. Should NOT let myself do this at the moment.
• Working on an idea for an essay examining video game narrative through semiotic theory.
• Waiting impatiently for the time when I can talk in more detail about the game-based course project that I continue to work on.
• Trying to make new professional connections using Twitter (@Maxathon), but feeling like it's not useful unless I already have an audience or a personal relationship with like-minded people. Might give up on this one.
• Taking notes to shore up the grant application.

Those are the things I really need to concentrate on at the moment. I'd love to work on other things, but I know myself, and if I try to do more than three or four serious things at once, nothing will come of it. The blog will likely be neglected for a while as a result. 

Here are just a few of the ideas bouncing around in the background. If you're interested in seeing a post on any of the following, let me know. It may be a while, but I'm more likely to get around to it in the end:

• Does Assassin's Creed II teach anything about Renaissance-era Italian history?
• Does Tropico 3 teach anything about history or politics in Cold War-era South America?
• Reevaluating my opinions about video game violence (not so much the state of the research, but the implications for the medium)
• Is all the hype over "gamification" misguided? (The answer is "yes;" the reasons why it's misguided are what is interesting.)