Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...

Downtowne Coffee
12oz Soy Mexican Mocha w/orange
Blueberry Elf Muffin

(Woo-hoo formatting!)

I'm going back to school next week.  Again.  I am beyond anxious about this. 

I had a rough time when I first went to college, dealing with a stressful relationship and an almost panicked urgency to "just finish school" so I wouldn't get stuck being poor forever.  But things went how they went and I had to take a semester off... for a few years.  And then I accepted that I couldn't make my situation any better than it was, and I tried to go back to school in an "as is" kind of situation.  It didn't work out.  I tried again.  It didn't work out.  Every semester, something happened - I had schedule issues, I had falling asleep every time I opened my homework issues, I hurt my back, I got kicked out.  I even missed the final for my Stress Management class because I had a panic attack.

You read that irony correctly.

Withdrawal, withdrawal, withdrawal...  It got to the point that I developed a kind of complex about going back to school.  And all the while, my academic knowledge slipped further and further away.  I was a math/physics major once upon a time.  I finished all my calculus and linear algebra and the like, and now I cannot remember almost any of it.  I'm just about starting from scratch.

I've began to question whether I'm up to the demands of school, especially with the two boys.  I can't keep up with my dishes - how am I supposed to keep up with school?  Angels though they are, it is basically non-stop stress all day, and all night, sometimes.  I have a hard time finding time to "cool down" my brain.  Me time.

And what I'm going to do with a degree anyway?  Years and years and years from now, when I eventually get it...?  I have concluded that I lack the rigor for the tedious research of such an academic degree as astrophysics.  That does not mean I can't work on something tirelessly for hours on end.  I've certainly done it before.  It just means that I've learned about myself that I have to love what I'm doing or it will fall apart.  Or, I'll fall asleep.  And sifting and sorting through data about redshifty galaxies, while interesting to hear about, could not hold my concentration long enough to process it myself. 

I'm not proud of that admission.  I wanted to believe that I was capable of so much more.  Maybe I could have been if things had gone differently, if the stresses hadn't been so relentless, all life long.  I'm sure there is a parallel universe out there somewhere where, right now, I am teaching all the college kids about parallel universes.  But here, now, my brain has been fried.  I've spent too long emotionally strung out to realize the promise I might have once possessed.

Mope, mope.

But who cares?  I ain't dead yet. 

And I want to learn, damn it.  Going to school isn't just about the potential financial stability.  After all, they make it almost financially fucking impossible just to get the damn degree.  But my brain hungers.  It's restless.  It craves more than just marathon days of HGTV in the background while I run around rescuing the boys from the certain peril of furniture pratfalls and territorial toy disputes.

So, strung out, chasing babies, blogging brief, cryptic haiku... "as is," but hopefully with clean dishes... once more unto the breach, I go...