Yesterday was a very productive day for me. I wrote the first half of a chapter on animation for a book on OpenLaszlo, along with working examples, then I refactored my laszlo finite state machine to something closer to generalizable. (It needs to be ready to handle the passage of time as a first-class event.) I didn't fix any laszlomail bugs, but I did sleep until past noon. Here's the thing: I didn't go to a birthday party for a friend of mine. When it got to be time to go, I felt, "I want to keep working!" ...so I did. So maybe this is how those wildly productive people manage to be wildly productive: by choosing work over a social life.
Waking up this morning, lazily, slowly, I realized this part of my life is luxurious. I have a weekend day and I can do whatever I want. I don't have much disposable cash, but in some ways that makes my weekends easier; back in the 90s dot-com days, I spent large parts of my weekends shopping, or doing dinner at a nice restaurant, and a movie, or snowboarding, or whatever. That kind of wanton spending isn't an option for me right now, so it's easier to choose to work.
But again: work for me is joy. Writing a chapter on animation in Open Laszlo is immensely enjoyable: this is cool technology that produces tasty user interface effects, and I'm excited to help people learn how to do it.
The real world is still here, though; today I have to tear myself away from the computer long enough to go grocery shopping. Grocery shopping supports coding, by providing the nutrients I need to keep coding, without disrupting my process to go out and find food.
Someday my life will be different from this; someday my life will include a life-partner and maybe kids and more commitments to external organizations and a regular yoga class and sunday-morning-waffles with my circle of friends... That will be then. For now, I am enjoying this life. I'm free, and I'm doing the work I've always wanted to do.