Home Stretch

Where was I? Was I ever actually here?

Coming down to the wire of this First Semester in Several Decades, and not doing too poorly, either. I think. Perhaps. Well, regardless, it's been incredible and I might actually be fractionally smarter because of it. The Program™ at Big U. is intense. It is focused. It challenges.

Frankly, it has kicked my ass up one side of the street and down the other. But that's what I joined for, and since I'm still standing (figuratively, of course, as I eschew Marko's standing desk solution) I kinda feel as though this will all work out for the best.

It's a bit of Achnacarry, which is what I wanted and needed all along.

I actually got pulled aside by the program director the other day, and he commented that I was doing rather well, and that he had high hopes for my future.

Those of you (hi Dad!) who may have some vague recollection of when I used to blog will realize that this news is happy news, since it means he thinks I'll be working before too much longer and that I will do well at it. Work, after all, is what I've been yearning for since... well, let's not go all the way back there.

Oh, and since I missed it (due to this foolish foray into Higher Education), to all those 99%ers: go screw. This is the second time I'm building myself from scratch. Yes, I took a foolish major for my undergrad, but I fought and clawed and learned and became an entrepreneur. I leveraged what I knew and applied it to what I didn't yet, without bitching, because, well... you know... work. You work. Sometimes you work and it pays off, and sometimes you work and it doesn't. But you work.

So stop bellyaching. You pays your money and you takes your chances.

There - incoherent, but there. Now I need to write one more paper and then... I dunno. Beer, probably.

I. Am. Alive.

At some point I decided to lay aside my charts and compass and just navigate by instinct. There's a destination awaiting me, somewhere, and what's most important is that I survive the trip. Spending hours poring over a tattered map won't help when what I need to to is trim sail and follow that star.

Big U. has been an awakening, too. It's tough on so many levels - I am bruised in some surprise places - and it's taken me a while to adjust to things. There is still some chafing.

What's most important is that I survive, and to some measure thrive here. The long days of inanity have been forcibly replaced by a severe regimen of thinking and more thinking. And much reading and writing (alas, no fiction, though that really didn't wind up being a huge selling point of mine, though, did it). So I am busy, healthy and well. When and if I pass through this fire, I will truly be reforged - scotaku still - and ready to return to combat.

More Later.

10.

I'm at home with my family--wife with a career and daughters who go to school--and I'm watching football and drinking a beer.

Because you haven't won.

About the gaps...

What a new world I live in. Since starting at Big U., everything feels so... I don't know if I have the right essence of it, but it's like a crisp morning with a hint of weather in the air. A good day to get something done. Only it feels like this most all of the time. Quite a refreshing change from earlier days.

The work, and now the classes, are showing me that I'm not yet washed up and done, not by a long shot. And as one of a scant handful of designers in the program--have I mentioned I'm in for my Masters in Human Factors--I have a potential employment advantage come graduation.

Not that I'm trying to jinx things.

Anyhoo, Blogger has a new, free app. I've decided to use it, to post on occasion. I haven't been this busy in a long time, and I'll be even busier in the weeks to come, but I'm still here.

Yay.

What is this place?

Wow. If anyone is still out there, you have some stamina, I'll tell you that. I've said before that sometimes you're as busy as you want to be, and sometimes you're as busy as you gotta be. Since starting at Big Important U, I've been squarely in the second camp. And it's been good.

It's also been exhausting, since I'm still over at the Fruit Store, and between the two, I've been on the go for essentially 90% of the time since the last post.

It's good to be busy. It sucks to be busy at Step One. However, as ASM826 is showing me, it's not so important to try to race through these things. Yeah, I want to be done and back onto that 'career path' I used to walk (was it really four years ago?), but I don't have to sprint.

"If you have one eye on your destination, you only have one eye left with which to find the Path."

So I'm trying wicked hard to be a white-belt again. Trying to channel my inner nihonjin and do what sensei and senpai tell me without bellyaching. Learn, learn, practice and learn more.

So I'm pooped. I'm happy. I'm scared. I'm frustrated.

I'm alive, I guess.

Thanks.