Work has blessed me with a 2-day week this week through a series of accumulative circumstances. My hope is to get back on track so that i can work 4 day weeks from here on after the first round of exams. However, working 5 days a week i got very behind on my school work and am playing catch up in my race to the upcoming tandem due date for all assignments and exams. I am really trying my hardest to learn this material but in my thirties as a homesteader in the middle of nowhere i feel like a dinosaur in comparison to my tech-savy classmates who are already working in the field in their sharp swivel chairs and stark home offices and know how to do all this stuff. It is incredibly fun to create things with software. It is fun to watch it come together. However, each project takes a minimum of ten hours, and that’s if you don’t mess something up and have to unravel your work to figure out where you made the error, fix it, and continue on. I am struggling with the time line of things, feel very out of my element in this world of technology, and am in constant terror of failing by default because i didnt have the time… going to school as an adult is very different from the first time around. Someone told me “you just have different priorities now” meaning i couldn’t completely drop everything to center life around school because i had the demands of my job to meet as well. The tests must be proctored and cant be scheduled until 8 days beforehand but work requires 2 weeks notice for a day off. I dont think the school planned on people having jobs when they set the online testing policies. It is a constant source of anxiety for me. Will i actually get the opportunity to take the test? Will i have the time im supposed to in order to study and prepare or will i be forced to choose between taking it early to accommodate everyone’s schedules and not taking it at all (an automatic zero). I cry often these days. I couldn’t find time to spend ten hours working on projects so i took it from the only slot i could, my sleeping hours. Often i sleep anywhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours a night. It makes me crazy and i dont respond to the world with the same careful contemplation that i would normally apply. Everything is frazzled and raw. All my feelings are right at the top and alarm bells of overwhelm are never far away. There are tears of anguish when i realize that i’ve misread an instruction or that some of them are out of order and i havent read ahead to realize that and the past 4 hours spent on a project were wasteful use of precious time because i have to go redo everything i worked on and none of the work i did in the past few hours can be used for anything. There are tears of frustration when i’m trying my hardest and still cant find the time needed to finish things. There are tears of fear when i sit in the house with my computer at 4 in the morning working on this stuff and i wonder if i made the right decisions, if i’m on the path God intended for me, if i will be able to see this through to the end. I want so desperately to have a lucrative career again. I dream of a day when i can put jelly in my grocery basket without feeling guilty and taking it out to place it back on the shelf because jelly is an expensive luxury that must be purchased sparingly. I want to feel the pride of being able to handle my own bills again and not have to rely upon family (who i am blessed to have the support of). This is a hard season in my life. I am trying to just keep walking and maybe at some point in the future i will find that i’ve reached other side of this valley. Last night i had reached a new point of misery and was drowning in sleep deprivation, fear of failure, and self pity when my sister sent me the most beautiful and encouraging message a person could hope to receive. It was so uplifting and wrapped in love. I sat up in my chair and put in the time in silence for the rest of the night. I was so tired i began seeing double and had to get very close to the screen to read the words but her message lodged in my heart and gave me the strength to keep going. At 4:18 this morning i finished my first storyboard assignment. Midnight happened to be the cutoff for my last opportunity to drop the classes if i wasn’t going to pass. I guess we’re doing this.
I was too tired and delirious to really enjoy it but i knew i had finished something and it was not half-assed. Years from now i’ll probably look at it and think “primitive and sloppy” but right now it feels profound, and more importantly: finished. What a lucky person i am to have a sister that can write such beautiful and loving words of encouragement.
My site depicts a road trip across texas with stops at 6 national and state parks. There is a paragraph written for each detailing all the exciting things there are to do and enjoy at each park. As you scroll through the locations’ different paragraphs the map changes to depict the newly mentioned park. If you zoom out you can see the whole road trip visible on the map with labeled stops. All of the images are for free public use and credited to the authors. I did it, i was done, i was going to bed. I laid down for 2 hours but hit the alarm and slept 5. It was not ideal but because of my arthritis i cant have any caffeine so this phenomenon happens often. I am awake now and off to tackle further school work, but, below are some videos of the finished storyboard project. This would be so fun if there wasn’t such a race to keep up!