Loose Ends

Four days (but only two business days) since my most recent job interview, five days before my scheduled FAR accounting seminar, one week from the inauguration of President Obama, one day after writing five pages of my first promising piece of non-Mâvarin fiction in years, and yet I feel curiously timeless. Each day except Sunday has no particular marker. Sleep in, get up, feed the dogs, check my email (where there might be a lead on a job), blog if I didn't do it the night before, study (maybe; got to be more consistent on that), dog park, dinner, and an evening and night of MSNBC and more online stuff: Facebook, HTML wrangling, blog jogging, etc., and maybe studying or novel-editing. The night ends, as often as not, with some Doctor Who at 3 AM or later. It could be Monday or Wednesday or Saturday, and sometimes I have to check to see what day it actually is.

This particular--I checked--Tuesday, I've already fed the dogs and updated a page on the St. Michael's web site. Now I'm considering whether to study online or to take the physical books I paid for and go sit at B&N or Austin's or Borders or Golden Corral for a while. When I was in college the second time, actually getting my accounting degree, I did a lot of my studying at Barnes and Noble, mostly to get out of reach of the Internet, and maybe have a slice of pumpkin cheesecake in season. I wrote papers during my lunch break at Golden Corral, taking my laptop along on the afternoon before class. Before I went back to school, I wrote most of Mages of Mâvarin in notebooks during lunch at Austin's, back when that restaurant was almost next door to Worldwide Travel.

But this is a different time, and the old strategies may not work. The CPA review course can be done online on the computer, offline on the computer, or by reading hard copy. But there are advantages to the online iteration - it automatically tracks your progress and the professors of each seminar can probably see where you stand. The only advantage to sitting with a book is that I can't lose concentration after two minutes and go see if anyone sent me a virtual plant in (Lil) Green Patch. No, instead I can wander off to look at books, or eat something. No strategy is perfect. Yet I know I can do this. I've accomplished big things before, and can do so again.

And I shouldn't waste time worrying about whether every entry on this blog is compellingly interesting, at the expense of more urgent things. But I do, of course. There's a Widgetbox Musings channel on my sidebar, and at one time the Outpost was the #4 blog on it. Now I'm more like #14, er, #16. Ouch! The number of blogs on the channel is up from about nine to 82, but it still offends my silly pride. I want to come up with something deep and amazing and amusing and universal for you all, every single day. Is that too much to ask?

Sigh. Well, I'd better get on with it. Tell you what. I'll pay some bills and then start with the online FAR for a bit. If I get too restless I'll, I don't know, take my laptop to a coffee shop. I know: I won't be fooling anyone.

Update: I took a textbook to the food court at Park Place Mall, and it worked out well, at least on the studying front. I'm actually not feeling well today, and couldn't eat much of the gyros platter I bought.

Update #2: Dog park time. But look: Ta-dah!

Update #3: By the end of the day, I'd completed three AUD lessons also, checked in with a recruiter and applied for a job online. Go me!

Karen