I’m sitting right in the middle of the Metcalf Large function room at Boston University, where I’m attending my second [url=http://2012.boston.wordcamp.org/]WordCamp Boston[/url]. I just realized that, while many of the people here have posted to WordPress-powered sites regularly for a while now, I’ve only written six posts in the past twenty-six months. That kind of makes me feel just slightly hypocritical.

So here’s a post for those of you who have missed me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go mingle some more.

It’s been 198 days since I last blogged. I didn’t mean to slack off that badly again, honest!

Okay, the truth is that the last six months have been just as crazy as last fall, if not more so. While I probably could have tested out of one of my classes, two others proved to be quite challenging, each in their own ways. The fourth class was a bit more challenging than I expected, as well. Apparently, C++ has evolved in the sixteen years since I last touched it. Who knew?

But I persevered, and actually did better than I expected, which is always nice. Also, it made for two semesters in a row where I did quite well.

So, of course, I’m endangering that winning streak by taking a required math class this summer. It’s that class and the continued part-time job (which is currently at around 33-35 hours a week) that are keeping me busy this summer. On the bright side, taking the math class during the summer keeps it from sucking time away from other classes, something that happened more than once in a previous college career.

There have been one or two non-academic highlights this year, though. In March, my friend Dan and I went to New York City for a few days, an adventure that I really should write up as a post on here soon. Next weekend (July 23rd and 24th), I’ll be continuing my trend of going to one web-related conference-type event a year, this time going to WordCamp Boston 2011. I’d also love to visit New York City again this fall, but there may not be time for it, especially in the first half of the semester.

Now let’s see if I can blog again sooner than 198 days from now…

It’s hard to believe it, but as of last night, 2010 is officially the past.

It actually wasn’t a bad year for me on average. The first half continued the trend of temp/contract jobs separated by gaps of unemployment and jobhunting, but things became much more interesting in the summer when I made the decision to return to school in the fall. I’ve since completed my first semester in the Website Development program at Nashua Community College — and thanks to transfer credit from the two previous schools I attended, I’m slightly ahead on the number of classes I’ll have to take, though I won’t graduate any earlier than spring of 2012.

At the same time that classes were starting, I was starting another temp job, this time at a company I’ve worked at before, with scheduling issues forcing me to be a telecommuter for a few mornings every week. Thanks to my class schedule this coming semester, there will be even more telecommuting in my future.

Other than having to work only part-time, there has been one downside to going back to school: In order to be able to do it, I had to take out a student loan, which means becoming debt-free in the next few years isn’t going to happen. On the other hand, I only have one other form of debt — the student loan from my UNH days over a decade ago. The irony of that has not been lost on me.

On top of the stress of starting classes, starting a “new” job, waiting for that much-needed first paycheck, and trying to figure out how to pay for textbooks, September also included the small matter of my brother getting married. That’s weird to think about even now, as he’s seven years younger than me.

I think it took me most of October to recover from the madness of September.

There were other things that happened in 2010. In May, I attended DrupalCamp NH as a way of properly introducing myself to Drupal, and I attended Drupal Design Camp Boston in June to further my experience; sadly, my increasingly busy life (see above) prevented me from doing much else with Drupal during the remainder of the year.

On July 4th, I joined some friends and acquaintances for a trip down to Boston to celebrate Independence Day, culminating in our enjoying the always-spectacular fireworks from what turned out to be fairly good seats alongside the Charles River. I was also able to see Eric Peters perform live for what was for me the first time in the eleven years I’ve been a fan of his music.

I’m not sure I could sum up 2010 in only a few words — the two halves of the year were very different from each other — but for the second half, the words “hectic”, “crazy” and “different” come to mind. The latter two, I think, would be a good description for the year as a whole.

So, what do I think 2011 will bring? Funny you should ask that…