Cutting down my APROM hours

This post is based on an email I sent today to Diane Duhamel, the Volunteer Coordinator at Fred Victor, where I volunteer as a computer tutor on Tuesday afternoons. I might cut down my APROM hours from 3 to 2 days a week, assuming that's OK with Arvin.

I'm pretty sure I can afford having only 2 days a week income from APROM. My expenses are roughly $1500/month (I keep track of every penny I spend in a spreadsheet). If I work 4 hours a day, at $15/hour = $120/week = $520/month. I would withdraw $1000/month from my mutual funds. Let's say I'm overspending, using that withdrawal amount of $1000/month, by $500/month (the value of my mutual funds would shrink, taking into account inflation, by $500/month). After 2 years I would have shrunk my mutual funds by only $12,000 (their current value exceeds $120,000, but by how much is information which I will not divulge here). I figure it will take me about 2 years to develop Pygridz. After Pygridz.com goes live (roughly 2 years from now), I will have 3 options: go back to working at APROM for 3 days a week, live off the profits made by Pygridz.com (if any), split my time between APROM and Pygridz.com. The 2nd option means leaving APROM, but only if Pygridz.com turns into a thriving hub for Python game designers, developing Pygridz (after it goes live) takes all of my time, and Pygridz.com is lucrative enough to support 2 full-time employees, including both myself and the manager.

My goal today is to create a dialog box, accessed from the Pygridz Map Editor. The purpose of the dialog box is to enable the user to select/edit parameters of the current tilex (a tilex is a collection of square tiles), as well as adding and deleting tilex objects. I'm also going to write a blog post.

I find I spend very little on entertainment. If I don't go to APROM I watch CBC News at 5, otherwise I watch The National at 9 (sometimes I watch both). On Sunday evenings I watch TV for 3 hours, and up to 2 hours on Saturday evenings. I rarely read for pleasure (except I read the Globe and Mail on Saturdays). I never rent DVDs. When I'm depressed it's hopeless for me to try and keep busy, I just go back to bed and stay there. Maybe when I'm not depressed I should try and find more fun things to do, instead of working on Pygridz or writing in my blog or emailing my sister all the time (at the very least I should go for walks more often). That way I might lessen my chances of getting depressed. I intend to email both Steve Bates and Milica (in separate emails). Hopefully I can get together for coffee with either of those 2 guys. We used to get together for lunch regularly, the 3 of us, but that stopped several months ago.

Now it's time for me to publish this post and write some Python code. I have less than 3 hours until dinnertime, so I had better make the most of those hours. That's what's happening at the Home of Pygridz, which will someday become (I hope) the Home of Python Gamers.