In the scheming calculations (they are ongoing) I did not take into account some small but important things.

***

I wrote that sentence early in the day and then had to save it as a draft for later, meaning now.

The next sentence was going to be about all the plans being rendered moot, and in fact I did spend a fair bit of time feeling rudderless and asea.

1. on the ocean; on a boat on the ocean
2. uncertain; (psychologically) adrift.

But after deciding that the next job needs to pay more than I thought, I looked at some more openings with an eye toward that fatter recompense. Three in particular, all in the pension system.

The one that paid best wouldn’t require any further prep on my part. However, it was basically a job being a flack and a spinner–for an okay cause–and they wanted bilingualism. Kind of a longshot in terms of both getting it, and liking it.

The other two paid enough-more-pretty-much and were ‘computery’.

Because the work I’m supposed to be doing Right Now is prepping classes, and because three of the four classes are basically preparations for tech certification tests, and because those very certifications loomed large in the job postings, I thought: Why not just use the teaching of them as a kind of prep for myself, and take all three tests sometime around the winter break? It would cost a pretty penny, and there’s no guarantee I’d pass on such a hellmarch of a study schedule, but what the fuck, why not.

It’s a very fresh idea and doesn’t feel stable or solid and yet it’s the most concrete thing I’ve got to hold onto right now.

Then I could use the spring semester to ramp up a serious job hunt and that could even last well into next summer if I needed it to. Worst case, I could pivot and throw down another chunk of credit card cash at trucking school …

By the time the semester starts for real on Monday I should have a much better sense of whether this is a sane thing to attempt.

If it is … well I can say right now that the Spill would probably suffer, perhaps becoming less than daily or just some perfunctory sentences thrown down or a sort of study guide itself temporarily.

But it does seem like a functional and productive waste of time to me right now, this half-teacher half-student montage of a semester fantasy.

I will keep you posted. So to speak.