Hello, world

Back at work after 2 days off sick. I still have a splitting headache and my stomach is a bit upset. Didn't sleep very well last night--or rather, slept okay until 5:30 AM, a half hour before it was time to get up, then spontaneously awoke, which screwed up my whole sleep cycle. Don't want to be here.

I didn't sleep hardly at all Tuesday night; woke up every 2.5 hours on the dot feeling dehydrated. Julie has one of those metal water bottles; I drank 3 or 4 of them throughout the course of the night. Then Wednesday morning I was in the bathroom. A lot.

Yesterday was a productive day, even sick, however. Around 11:00 AM I started feeling better. Got caught up on some coursework and figured I would help Julie out, so I thoroughly cleaned the dining room and our office (both of which were in DIRE need--2 of the worst rooms in the house). She was very pleased at that development. However, I think I may have pushed myself too hard, leading to me still feeling like crap today. Everyone keep your fingers crossed that it's a slow day today.

In other news, I've been thinking very hard about my future of late. This weekend will be the big litmus test--I have a midterm exam and will have to see if I blow it or not--but there's a good possibility I won't be continuing on with the MLIS program at Pitt. I'm 35 years old and I've been just stumbling around doing whatever seemed like a good idea for far too long. I'm not making enough money/can't pay student loans. Well, grad school would fix both of those problems, wouldn't it? Not really, as it turns out. Unless you want to move to another state, there are no library jobs out there. Pittsburgh is closing four branches of our public library system and eliminating 30 jobs. And Librarians? They don't retire. They tend to love their jobs and work until the day they die.

Don't get me wrong; I'm going to finish out the semester and try and do as well as I can. Simply quitting mid-semester would slam a door hard in my face that would be much harder to open again in the future, should I decide to try again. But with grad school you really need to have a passion for what you're learning, and right now I find I don't have a passion for information science. It's interesting, yes. But it doesn't hit me as, "this is what I want to do for the rest of my life." A lot of the so-called groundbreaking research and books I've been reading have evoked a "well duh," response in me. Maybe I should've written this stuff down a long time ago.

Which brings me to what I want. I want to write. I want to write, and I want to own my own business--either a coffeehouse or a gaming store. Those are (and have been for a very long time) my two overriding goals. And just when I was starting to make progress with my writing, what did I do? Sabotage it by entering a graduate program that would take away every second of time I had for writing. I don't have the money to open my own business right now, but the money has to be out there somewhere--many, many people do it every day. It takes a willingness to take chances, a bit of risk, and the desire to go for it.

I need to figure out a way, and go for it.