Dammit, I need an extra 8-10 hours a week. One extra “work” day, as it were. So I can do the shit I want to do, not just the work I have to do. I want to build cool Ruby on Rails apps, and use cool PHP frameworks like Zend, and design money user interfaces with cool JavaScript libraries, and make awesome looking PhotoShop/Illustrator graphics and designs. Hell, I even want to make fun .NET apps. And basically just work on sites that don’t suck the life out of people. That’s freaking impossible with kids (not doing that cool stuff, but getting the time to do it all.) I can have 2 extra hours a day, as long as I get up earlier or stay up later. Neither of which are all that appealing to me. What else can I do. I need a solid chunk of time, all at once, not small bits throughout the week, that will never work. Just when I get momentum I’ll have to stop. Think. Options. Alternative ways to be at a computer. In the car? I wish. Put that time wasted sitting in traffic to some use. Ride a train? To where? From where? Plus I’d need a laptop. I don’t have one, and I don’t really like them anyway. Nope. No train rides. Hmmm.

Take one night a week and don’t sleep? Which night? I’ll be completely worthless the next day. What about Thursday night? No work gets done on Fridays anyway. I could just stay up all night. And build mega cool shit. And I get to add about 8 extra hours to my week. How salty would I be all day Friday? Could I just go home and go to bed? Not so much, the kids will need their dad Friday evenings. I could try it. And just get to bed early Wednesday nights and Friday nights. Wow, if I could pull that off, it would be sweet. I ought to research that. See how much life it really takes off of you to consistently lose that much sleep. Or maybe I’d adjust? Maybe? Sleep extra hard to make up for it? OK, did some initial sleep deprivation research. Turns out that it’s not very good for you. Makes you dumb, fat, and irritable. Plus it increases cancer risks, all sorts of good stuff. I wonder what they define “deprivation” as? Does completely missing sleep one night a week qualify? That’s pretty regular, I think my body might adjust. But 7 days in between each sleepless night, that kinda spaces it out a lot. Or there’s this study by the Marine Corps that shows “While some people may like to believe that they can train their bodies to not require as much sleep as they once did this belief is false”. Wow, false. Not just “misleading”, or “unlikely”, but false. OK, think of another solution…

Maybe I could squeeze out 4 hours each on Saturday and Sunday mornings. If I got up at 5 and the kids slept until 9. That’s asking a lot. Out of me and out of them. If I could get to sleep by 10, Friday and Saturday night, that would give me 7 hours of sleep those nights, not too horrible. Can I really fall asleep by 10? If I push hard enough to get in bed early enough. Hopefully the kids and I could take naps in the afternoon. This could work. But what about when the kids wake up at 7? I’m going to be bitter that I only got 2 hours of “my time”. Yes, that will definitely aggravate “the tar out of me” as I’ve heard it put.

What’s the bullet-proof plan for this? How can I guarantee some Gabe time to work/play on side projects? I could work 4 ten hour days a week at my “job”, then use the other “work” day as a Gabe day. That’s the bullet-proof, best way to do this thing. Any takers? Who wants to hire me? I’ll work Mon.-Thurs. from 7-5, then Friday I’ll work on my own stuff from 8-4. I’d prefer to use your resources in the office, but I could use my own at home if I am forced; but then you will need to baby sit my kids while I do it. OK, that just about settles that.