I'm still sick. I'm coughing like one of those tubercular characters in a Victorian novel and my voice is all fucked up. I took a sick day last Tuesday when this started, and then went merrily back to work the next day along with all that goes with that: waiting outside in the cold for buses or rides from co-workers, spending all day talking with users on the phone...moron. At least I didn't try and bike to work. Anyway, this is really distressing because we're flying to Washington on Friday and I kinda need to be well by then. And it's cold and wet up there. And the convergence of bills and rent this week means we are flat broke and don't have the money for a co-payment for me to go to the doctor. There are always ways, I guess. It's only ten dollars, and maybe I can talk the doctor's office into taking the co-pay on Friday

If we continue at this rate without making a change, we will be out of debt (excluding student loans) in a few short years. That's the good news, and fanTAStic news it is indeed. Until then though, life will largely be like this. Not having ten lousy bucks for the doctor. Having to dip into laundry money to take the bus. Having to turn down invitations because our paychecks went into bills and the egregious sums they charge for rent here in sunny SoCal. And then what will I do? Last I checked my friends who are strictly freelance writers were either desperate or being supported by their significant others. While I'd love to be paid for my writing again (and still intend to pursue that as a sideline), I don't have any kind of clear vision of a future wherein BOTH Angela and I can make a comfortable living creatively. In those same few short years, I'm gonna be 40. We want a house. We want to adopt a little girl. I would really like to be able to retire someday. I need a future. What I'm doing now is fine in and of itself, but the more I look at it the more I see that this road leads nowhere.

Which is why it's time for me to take a serious look at going back to school, something I've resisted with all my might till now. Whenever I've thought of things I might like to do, library work has always come up. All that stands in my way is an MLS or MLIS degree, but I have experience with books and experience in information technology, and there will apparently be a drastic shortage of qualified librarians in the near future. I've waffled, wondering if I would really like it or if it's only appealing to me in a daydream sort of way, but it's time to cut all that crap. If I do it, I am very certain that I will at least not dislike it any more than what I'm doing now. And I can see a future in it, where I do not see a future for me anywhere else.

So my rudimentary plan then is this: get as much information about enrolling and succeeding in an MLIS program from the folks who offer them and the folks who've gone through them (any librarian noders out there?). Research the jobs available in that field to see where I want to take this--already I find there are more potential uses for the degree out there than I imagined. Research financial aid that does not involve getting deeper into debt. Get that aid, get into a program, move to where the program is and the cost of living is more reasonable (maybe do distance learning at first, if we can't move right away). And then as the maus would say, Go, Go, Go.

I hope this doesn't sound like some kind of "poor me" rant. Honestly, it's not that bad. I'm not picking roaches out of my food, battling some terrible disease, getting on a transport headed for Kuwait, or anything genuinely awful like that. My life is more than adequate in the great global scheme of things, really. I'm just fed up with the way things are. There's no action. I've been at a virtual standstill for close on three years now. It's time to kick a hole in the wall and get out into the fresh air again.

Lent Update: My Lenten discipline is daily time set aside just for solitary prayer using the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. So far, not bad--I've only missed one day. (Sunday! Cripes.) As always it has proven to be an amazingly good thing. Funny how the things that make me feel happy and complete and connected are the things I'm so goddamn lazy about. Like prayer, and writing, which for me are often the same thing. Just my innate depravity showing itself again I s'pose.