Baby steps, baby steps
I came within a hair's breadth of dropping out this morning.
Last week was reading week. I spent a lot of time with family and with Christa. I even took another day off to spend with Christa. As a whole, it was perfect.
Then I came back here.
Our class is putting together a magazine this semester. Last night I developed insoluble Writer's Block. Today was the deadline for our articles.
After a while spent fruitlessly bashing my head against the block last night, I gave up and went to bed. I set the alarm for an ungodly hour and slept.
The block didn't go away when the alarm went off. I went back to bed.
After sleeping late I wasted a good deal of time trying to figure out why I should get up and go to school.
Why should I when I don't care about the program? I don't care about the television or radio classes we have to take. I don't feel like I have anything invested in the magazine. The only classes I care about are news writing and opinion writing because they are directly related to my career goals. And I can't spend the time I want to on those classes because of all the others.
What a waste. Yet another year spent inefficiently hopping across stepping stones to where I already know I want to be. How many left to go?
Better to have not gone back to school. I should have taken things into my own hands. I could have landed a part-time job somewhere that wasn't more than two hours from Christa and my family and done night school journalism classes at some community college. Done freelance work, job shadowed a crime reporter or two and got an internship on my own.
Yes, it would have been a lot of work, but so is what I'm doing now. The difference is that only a quarter of the work I'm doing now is even relevant to what I want to do long-term. And none of it is getting me any money.
These were the thoughts rolling around my head this morning that led to the big one.
Why not chuck it all and do that now?
I nearly did. I still might.
But for now I'm too stubborn to quit something I've already put eight months into. Especially when there's only five weeks left in first year and things will be more focussed next year.
Now I'm going to stop wasting time, go back to the apartment and finish the article I don't care about so my editor doesn't have a breakdown tomorrow.
Last week was reading week. I spent a lot of time with family and with Christa. I even took another day off to spend with Christa. As a whole, it was perfect.
Then I came back here.
Our class is putting together a magazine this semester. Last night I developed insoluble Writer's Block. Today was the deadline for our articles.
After a while spent fruitlessly bashing my head against the block last night, I gave up and went to bed. I set the alarm for an ungodly hour and slept.
The block didn't go away when the alarm went off. I went back to bed.
After sleeping late I wasted a good deal of time trying to figure out why I should get up and go to school.
Why should I when I don't care about the program? I don't care about the television or radio classes we have to take. I don't feel like I have anything invested in the magazine. The only classes I care about are news writing and opinion writing because they are directly related to my career goals. And I can't spend the time I want to on those classes because of all the others.
What a waste. Yet another year spent inefficiently hopping across stepping stones to where I already know I want to be. How many left to go?
Better to have not gone back to school. I should have taken things into my own hands. I could have landed a part-time job somewhere that wasn't more than two hours from Christa and my family and done night school journalism classes at some community college. Done freelance work, job shadowed a crime reporter or two and got an internship on my own.
Yes, it would have been a lot of work, but so is what I'm doing now. The difference is that only a quarter of the work I'm doing now is even relevant to what I want to do long-term. And none of it is getting me any money.
These were the thoughts rolling around my head this morning that led to the big one.
Why not chuck it all and do that now?
I nearly did. I still might.
But for now I'm too stubborn to quit something I've already put eight months into. Especially when there's only five weeks left in first year and things will be more focussed next year.
Now I'm going to stop wasting time, go back to the apartment and finish the article I don't care about so my editor doesn't have a breakdown tomorrow.
