Three months ago, I was unemployed and stressed. I am now longing for days gone by. When I was unemployed, I applied for 307 jobs in six months. I was busy. But, I was also depressed and sleeping a lot. Other than job hunting, I was reading books… that’s about it. Not a vigorous schedule, but, in all honesty, when one is depressed, that’s a lot. Fast forward three months. I went from sleeping late, napping, looking for jobs, and reading books, to school. WTF?
I don’t regret going to school. I know that my future is going to be brighter when I’m done. But, that being said, should I have gone back to learn everything new? In 11 weeks, I’ve been given instruction on Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro and Bridge. Don’t forget Sublime Text 2, Mamp, FileZilla and now WordPress. There’s a *kaboom* right there. That’s nine software packages in 11 weeks. Then you throw in HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, PSP, fancy photography and video techniques, lighting, and infrastructure architecture (structure of a website). I kid you not, all I want to do is nap in my spare time.
I’m excited to be learning all this. I was reminded to think of all the things that I could not do in November. It’s pretty cool. But it’s also pretty scary. Because I’m not sure I know all the things I’ve learned so far. Have I really learned it? Or have I been going through the motions and just getting lucky in following along? I don’t know. My grades range from 89.9% to 100%. Apparently, I’m doing pretty well….
But you know what’s missing? I seem to have lost my weirdness. I haven’t had a single zombie garden gnome attack me in my backyard. But, then again, there’s still snow on the ground. What zombie, in their right mind, would wander about in sub-zero temperatures. I have some blissfully bizarre (but wonderfully funny) classmates that I get together with for beers at the school pub – usually on Thursdays. We’ve had some seriously fucked up conversations, which is awesome.
But despite all that, I find that I’m spending so much time trying to make sure I stay on the honour roll that I’m losing myself. There are only five months left. I hope I’m still the same me when I’m done…
The Witch of South Mountain 