Yeah yeah I know. It's been a really long time since I logged in, posted a blog and yada yada yada. I'm inconsistent. I've been immersed in school since October and I've been trying to balance life as a dog momma, a full time student and the only person interested in keeping us from starvation, or worse, being buried alive in our own stench. I had an epiphany of sorts early in the fall after a summer trip home to attend my sons wedding and meet my first grand child. We hadn't been back to Maine in almost two years and it was an eye opener. I'm still not sure whether it was the change of scenery and comparing the two very different lifestyles and surroundings or if things really had just deteriorated that much in our old home towns. I lived in the capitol of Augusta for ten years after growing up in rural northwestern Maine. It was shocking how run down and unkempt the area appears to be these days. Anywho, upon returning to Vegas and work, I felt sort of...um, depressed? I question that emotion or state of mind simply because I don't know if that's what I really felt. I felt isolated, discontent with my job(which wasn't a new feeling), generally out of sorts and I missed my family. I was in a state of despair over the fact that I finally have a grand child and will never get to see him grow up. He would never know me. I guess I felt a little desperate. Short of giving up everything we worked and sacrificed for here to move back to a climate and economy that was depressing in itself, I saw no real options. Neither of us were making the kind of money necessary to jet set back and forth between coasts and we couldn't be draining our savings. That's when I realized that I could do something about our dilemma. I could change careers! Sounded legit at the time. So I started my long journey of researching lucrative careers that offered high pay, flexible scheduling and lots of freedom. It took several weeks to finally settle on something that I started learning years before and gave up. In early October I purchased a self-paced Desktop and Mobile Web Developers course and quit my job. I punched a hole in my 401k to become a full time student and change my life. You can't get ahead without taking risks right? I know that I am a financial planners nightmare but it's my money, my life took a desperate turn and I needed to take my one chance at a new career that would give me what I want out of life.
I will just tell you right now that you should never ever believe what you read when you're on a website that is trying to sell you something. They are going to pad the facts, remove any negative(i.e. truthful) reviews and lead you to believe that this is your one stop shop for your educations needs. I definitely have lots of regrets and reservations about Ed2go these days but I am making the best of a bad situation. I am spending enormous amounts of time learning about each subject from online tutorials, websites that are generous enough to give free education and youtube. Where Gatlin Online Training has let me down, I refuse to be had.
Enough about that. Around the same time, my daughter started lamenting the situation with her former dog. She had given Sully(a magnificent and docile pure bred Rottweiler) up for adoption. She liked to call it foster care but, in reality, she knew she'd never be able to take him back in his lifetime. The woman who cared for him(I use that term very loosely) had contacted her to say she was getting a new puppy and was going to bring Sully to an animal shelter if she didn't take him back. In no position to do that, she asked if I would be willing to take him if she could get him to me. Of course I said yes. I sort of didn't think she'd really be able to do that but I had a special affection for Sully and thought he would be a great companion. Well, in late November I received and email with details about his arrival via United Petsafe.
Sully has become my best bud. He is so loving and easy going. He is also the slobberyest, sheddyest 100 lbs of dog you can imagine. It's a daily battle to keep from being overwhelmed with the mess he makes. I had many lovely months of hardly having to do anything to keep the house clean. And now there is life with the dog. I don't begrudge him his doggy manliness but...damn, there is hair and dried slobber in every single conceivable space in this house. There is a small corner off to the side of my work station that isn't really big enough for anything but he sticks his head in there and drools anyway. It's also the spot where large amounts of his cast off fur balls up. Some times I just live with the mess and quell my OCD with lots of coffee. Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning in it.
It feels very strange and foreign to me to not have a job and to not even be looking. Sometimes I have a moment and think about that. I get so entrenched in course work and life that I forget that I don't have an income. I do miss money. But all this is for the best imaginable cause. At some point down the road I will be able to freelance and work from anywhere. My hubby will be able to give up his job and be my travel companion. As one may surmise, my goal isn't to find a job in my new career per se. It's to work on my own terms, taking on contract work. I am almost ready to start building websites so it won't be long before I can start building a portfolio. I have a few more weeks of PHP and then probably a month of XML before my actual paid course is complete. Then I need to get immersed in CMS and learn a few of the popular programs. I took a little hiatus during the holidays to learn Android app development but discovered that it's too much for me to handle right now.
Hubby will be rolling in shortly and I want to talk about homemade cleaning products so I will be up early tomorrow morning for that blog.
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