Speaking of which, if you are a writer and you would like to contribute. Let me know. This site gets more traffic than you might think, and I'm all about sharing. The main thing I look for in writing is authenticity and the ability to relate your experiences to others who might be different from you. I've had one taker so far, but I haven't asked much either.
Moving back to my decision-making, I'd say it's more of a realization. However, it's also something I already knew. I've been trying, needing to sort out the play-by-play and the expectations for several months now.
I'm going to school for myself. I am 35, next month. I have a man in my life that for some reason won't leave me alone. I haven't really asked him to leave me alone, so it's not some abusive situation or anything. I just give the man cold-shoulder galore and I would have expected him to give up by now. It's not a priority and I don't really know what will come of that, but for better or worse he has become this fixture now and I don't imagine he's going anywhere.
I am going to college for me, ultimately. I've spent a summer--a summer plus, really--thinking. I've mulled this all through, as far as whether or not I can do this right now. I've asked opinions. I've run through scenarios and my finances and time, logically, piece by piece. I've meditated on it all a lot. There is no answer. The situation is so up in the air, financially, with coin and passion and all throughout the whole Tarot fortune wheel. This is with cards pointing clearly and concisely to wands since the month began. Sometimes it's cups, but predominately there's been wand-waving fire all the way up until today. And that's it. That's where I'm at, in all the emotion of this that can't be smothered or emptied. The astrological signs. The Tarot. Because it's an emotional decision. There is no reasoned, logical, clear-cut better path here, and that also scares me. Every time. Because people's emotions have cut and made me bleed so often. Because my past has been "yours are not as important as mine", and it wasn't just one relationship.
Or, reader, you could just chock this all up to some hocus pocus, and maybe the northwestern autumn in the air is reacting poorly with the stack of problems I am both having to solve and being given to solve. As if more and more the academic expectations will make me some pillar of computer science excellence. Maybe it's just making me crazy.
I'm going to school for myself. I am 35, next month. I have a man in my life that for some reason won't leave me alone. I haven't really asked him to leave me alone, so it's not some abusive situation or anything. I just give the man cold-shoulder galore and I would have expected him to give up by now. It's not a priority and I don't really know what will come of that, but for better or worse he has become this fixture now and I don't imagine he's going anywhere.
And this is how I relationship now, I guess. Maybe? School has gotten in the way of that, a lot. Which is sometimes annoying, but often I feel grateful for it.
And this post isn't really about him. But doggone it, there this man went, shooting through this post as I was trying to talk school.
Go figure.
Anyways, I'm going to school for myself. When I was growing up, my mom was constantly telling me how handy I was, or would be. How good I was at using my hands. I once made a little man out of one of those little rolling popping things that toddlers play with. I put it upside down, so the clear dome with all the multi-colored rainbow balls became the see-through dome of his head. I put him in overalls and pasted pennies on for eyes, and he had a pipecleaner mouth, and I called him a "robot". I made art. My mom looked at it and told me I was going to be a builder when I grew up. She was always saying how good I was with using my hands to build things, As an example, she always talked about that one time, that one time, when I built a... "robot".
But actually I was really uncoordinated. I liked to read and draw and play music and was deathly afraid of heights. Nevertheless, I did take a job as an electrician when some brother in our congregation offered it to me at 16.
"Tell everyone you're 18, because you're not supposed to be on a construction site at your age. The trades are the best way to make money, though. The earlier you start the better."
I homeschooled, but I worked more and more. It was mostly digging at first--digging trenches for conduits and underground cable--but slowly they let me inside to install wires and lights. Slowly I learned. A friend that started around the same time as me, same age, progressed much faster, but the money was fantastic. FANTASTIC! I made more money than anyone else my age at the time. Meanwhile for the past few years my lunatic father, Professor of Library Science, had been teaching me how to use a computer, the internet, and how to create websites. Mom told us his brain was diseased when I was about 5 years old, so that was just kooky fun. More art. Nothing serious about it. Nothing dependable. And I've been writing about all this and more in my book, for the whole summer, so I kind of got sidetracked there. This was supposed to be about school.
I'm going to school for myself. When I was in middle school, my sister started taking algebra, then geometry, and then by high school, she was taking trigonometry. My mom was a math teacher and was always encouraging her. Listening to my sister struggle through certain problems, I felt like I could do them. I felt like I understood them. But I hated doing homework that felt pointless and too easy, so I was in plain old middle school math. No "-metries" of any kind for me. Three years of pre-algebra, in total, was my monotonous lane to drive in. Why waste my time with the homework? I suspected I might be feel more interested in a higher level class. I probably should've been in a higher level class.
"You're just not as good at math as your sister. You're better with your hands. I remember when you were 5 years old, you made this robot..."
Eventually, when I was nearly 25 years old, I left the electrical trade and started on an engineering degree. I took trigonometry and passed it with in "A" in a six-week accelerated schedule. Then Calculus I, and then I moved on from there. And yeah, this post is about that. About school. I keep forgetting.
I'm going to school for myself. It will mean more money, and not just the kids and I barely scraping by, with the past seven years being me having landed the supporting role of a vastly unappreciated female bookkeeper, that's not why I am doing it. Maybe it's that the area is full of elites and I don't know one other single mom my age actually living here in Beaverton. Not apart from my previous partner. Much less do I know another single trans parent... I don't even know another trans parent in the area. But I digress. Maybe I'm surrounded by couples making me feel inadequate. Maybe I am judged for those things, and maybe I have a horrible situation going on with my ex right now that the children need protection from. They needed much more of my time this past year, and thankfully my full time work didn't need to be replaced when the pandemic brought it screeching to a halt last September. I was able to work things out and give them more of my time, which they really needed while being socially distanced from friends at school. No time for anything else. Every extra moment was spent on them or sometimes just worrying for them, when things were bad. And the court paperwork is filed and a hearing date set, and I need to suffer through what I expect to be a feigned mediation one last time...
But I am going to school for myself.
I am going to college for me, ultimately. I've spent a summer--a summer plus, really--thinking. I've mulled this all through, as far as whether or not I can do this right now. I've asked opinions. I've run through scenarios and my finances and time, logically, piece by piece. I've meditated on it all a lot. There is no answer. The situation is so up in the air, financially, with coin and passion and all throughout the whole Tarot fortune wheel. This is with cards pointing clearly and concisely to wands since the month began. Sometimes it's cups, but predominately there's been wand-waving fire all the way up until today. And that's it. That's where I'm at, in all the emotion of this that can't be smothered or emptied. The astrological signs. The Tarot. Because it's an emotional decision. There is no reasoned, logical, clear-cut better path here, and that also scares me. Every time. Because people's emotions have cut and made me bleed so often. Because my past has been "yours are not as important as mine", and it wasn't just one relationship.
It was damn near all of them, honestly.
I am going to school for myself. And here I am, ultra-practiced at putting that aside. There is no amount of extra. No amount of financial betterment that makes me think that what the children need right now is me to be that level of busy. With all that is happening, there is no way that is where my focus and time is best spent. I am going to school for me. I want to say I completed it. It's important for me to finish it.
I am going to school for myself. And here I am, ultra-practiced at putting that aside. There is no amount of extra. No amount of financial betterment that makes me think that what the children need right now is me to be that level of busy. With all that is happening, there is no way that is where my focus and time is best spent. I am going to school for me. I want to say I completed it. It's important for me to finish it.
It's a proof.
It's a logical proof. "Robot" implies "handyman" was a true implication, but only because both were false in the end. It was art. I wasn't very handy in the end. Not to mention, I wasn't a man. Childhood procrastination implies "stupid". That is a false implication because "stupid" was false. Childhood procrastination implies being a child. It implies sadness and dissatisfaction if the child says that's true. "True implies true" is logically sound. "False implies true" is also logical, because if you get the supposition wrong, it doesn't change any of the truth that is revealed to you. But true can't imply false. That's a logical mess. It doesn't matter what fact you think you've attained. It doesn't matter what truth you have. If the object of your implication doesn't exist as you thought it did, that truth you're holding onto implies nothing.
And here I am. I'm being "smart". Honors college. Phi Theta Kappa. A merit-based scholarship. All starting late in life, with heavier struggles than most could bare, and with no family help in attaining any of it. No outside help at all beyond people I've met and who referenced me. And eventually I will finish the degree. I will bring it all to a logical nothing and all of those horrible memories will come crashing down. But until then, this isn't the time yet.
And here I am. I'm being "smart". Honors college. Phi Theta Kappa. A merit-based scholarship. All starting late in life, with heavier struggles than most could bare, and with no family help in attaining any of it. No outside help at all beyond people I've met and who referenced me. And eventually I will finish the degree. I will bring it all to a logical nothing and all of those horrible memories will come crashing down. But until then, this isn't the time yet.
I am not going to school--that's the decision--and maybe that's for my children. Maybe not going is me having more time for them while it's all so rough. Maybe not going now is also being careful about debt, so that they have a better chance, when they want to go. But also, this is for my health and my current peace of mind. I can't be so absorbed in this headspace right now. Staring down all these problems, whether logical or legal, I need more yin, and a whole lot less yang. I can no longer be so weighed down that I have no time for me or for maintaining relationships, or my own emotional strength to handle it all.
The card I pulled today was the Knight of Cups. As I removed it from the middle of the deck, three other cards fell out. The Eight of Swords, the Page of Cups, and the Queen of Pentacles practically leaped out toward me, and then fell to the floor. I'm pursuing something. I'm journeying into an emotional realm and what I need is within my grasp. Those fallen cards I take to signify how surrounded and bound I feel. How I am refusing to see the way out. That I should trust my intuition and move on towards feelings and emotional needs I've only been flirting with, rather than continuing to stay bound by all these logical but unnecessary problems. I've partially fooled myself into thinking I'll be more grounded and secure from my pursuits. Like the cards, those beliefs have been pushing themselves out at me, as if they were necessary. But putting more trust in my inner "Page of Cups", that empathic intuitiveness, will bring about that groundedness.
The card I pulled today was the Knight of Cups. As I removed it from the middle of the deck, three other cards fell out. The Eight of Swords, the Page of Cups, and the Queen of Pentacles practically leaped out toward me, and then fell to the floor. I'm pursuing something. I'm journeying into an emotional realm and what I need is within my grasp. Those fallen cards I take to signify how surrounded and bound I feel. How I am refusing to see the way out. That I should trust my intuition and move on towards feelings and emotional needs I've only been flirting with, rather than continuing to stay bound by all these logical but unnecessary problems. I've partially fooled myself into thinking I'll be more grounded and secure from my pursuits. Like the cards, those beliefs have been pushing themselves out at me, as if they were necessary. But putting more trust in my inner "Page of Cups", that empathic intuitiveness, will bring about that groundedness.
Or, reader, you could just chock this all up to some hocus pocus, and maybe the northwestern autumn in the air is reacting poorly with the stack of problems I am both having to solve and being given to solve. As if more and more the academic expectations will make me some pillar of computer science excellence. Maybe it's just making me crazy.
I am (mostly) an A-grade student, saying this. Maybe that's perspective.
Either way, that needs to stop. I'm not in a position to continue this right now. But I also know I did try and make it work this term. I'm glad I did that. I can't say I didn't try. I will have a lot of financial aid to return, and I'll probably loose at least one scholarship. But this is fine, grinning dog in the bowler hat that I am.
As the fires rage around me, the last thing I need to do is be tap-a-tip-tapping away at a keyboard, trying to program logic into inanimate, not to mention imaginary, objects. Cars and boats and drawbridges. A transportation system for an imaginary city of the future. Program it. Develop at least two data structures from the ground up, even though they exist in the template library. That's my assignment, due in the next two weeks. I'm halfway finished. Probably I'll finish it, since I'm this far. Today is the last day to drop though, and the walls of this building of responsibilities surrounding me are threatening to collapse. I hate doing homework that feels pointless anyways.
"I will diminish, and go into the West..."
On the month of my birthday, a new edition of Lord of the Rings will be released. I almost forgot how much I loved that trilogy, and The Hobbit, when I was younger. I was suddenly reminded of all this when I saw it pop up on amazon. The Hobbit is one of the books I read to my children, back when we read regularly before bed, and I still have it.
As the fires rage around me, the last thing I need to do is be tap-a-tip-tapping away at a keyboard, trying to program logic into inanimate, not to mention imaginary, objects. Cars and boats and drawbridges. A transportation system for an imaginary city of the future. Program it. Develop at least two data structures from the ground up, even though they exist in the template library. That's my assignment, due in the next two weeks. I'm halfway finished. Probably I'll finish it, since I'm this far. Today is the last day to drop though, and the walls of this building of responsibilities surrounding me are threatening to collapse. I hate doing homework that feels pointless anyways.
"I will diminish, and go into the West..."
On the month of my birthday, a new edition of Lord of the Rings will be released. I almost forgot how much I loved that trilogy, and The Hobbit, when I was younger. I was suddenly reminded of all this when I saw it pop up on amazon. The Hobbit is one of the books I read to my children, back when we read regularly before bed, and I still have it.
I had to put Lord of the Rings in storage though, after leaving Florida. Eventually, my ex's sister gained access to the storage unit and stole everything inside. There was about a thousand dollars worth of things there, plus a lot of sentimentality. The children's things. Memories. The cops wouldn't request a warrant without me personally being there in Indiana to allow them to search my storage unit. Public Storage was rightfully embarrassed by their security, and refused to allow the cops to enter, even with my permission. Even though their employee corroborated the story to the cops, the police wouldn't serve a warrant. I wasn't about to spend a few hundred to go back there and press charges from within the state that denied my gender and my legal paperwork when I went to apply for my driver's license.
But I do miss that book.
Maybe I'll get the new edition, when it comes out. I've been trying to rebuild my library. Between my own needs, I also am trying to encourage my youngest to read more by introducing her to more books. We still read a lot together. I can't believe I forgot that one.
All the rebuilding has helped. It helped me, personally, to turn inwards and write 40,000 words this summer. Now I have to edit that book, the one that's been nearly a decade to complete. Maybe one thing I can do in all this, is finally put that out into the universe.