Everybody Juggles.

So why shouldn’t I juggle too?  I’ve been juggling already.  Figuring out how to live sober has been really, really tricky. I don’t even think that, on balance, I’m very good at it.  I’ve complained about the big chunks of my life that really aren’t working, that I struggle with, that I’m apparently unwilling to fix, but I’ve also come to believe that I have a natural failure level.  No matter how high the bar is set, I come in X percent below it.  So if I want to achieve more, perhaps I should just raise the bar high enough to reach the real goals – Ideal – Failure Rate = Achievable Goal  Maybe that’s just an insane idea, too.  Who knows.

On some level though I know that when I really push myself, I achieve more.

So the closet place had cut my hours, wouldn’t (or couldn’t) produce a work schedule, screwed up orders for commissioned sales, drove me crazy, and at the same time this sort of freelance gig I’ve been doing for Farm and Dairy Outlook was having more and more work for me, so I told the closet lady that I was going to work full-time somewhere else and that I could still cover Sundays and one weekday afternoon for her.  I covered the next Sunday, and she had someone else there for me to train.  And I looked at the schedule for the next week and I wasn’t on it at all.

Fine.  Whatever.

And the job at F&D is way more complicated that I have the training to do, but THEY LOVE ME.  And it got me thinking, maybe I should just invest in the technical training required to do this job well.  In the worst case it gives me some more marketable skills and will earn me a better living, provided I’m halfway good at it, even if F&D should not work out.

The skills that are required are entirely technical, even though they are considered an art education.  It doesn’t require being a particularly talented designer.  It does require the ability to use the Adobe CS3 proficiently.  My employers gave (GAVE) me a PowerBook G4 and the Adobe CS3 Master Collection.  But just knowing the software isn’t really enough.  Just going through training isn’t a degree. And training is expensive.

The graphic design program at BSU is heavy on the art/art history/drawing/design part of graphic design – it’s a real art education.  There is a trade school here in town though that offers a graphic design degree that is almost entirely technical – an associate’s degree that is really 20 months of hands on training with the tools I’m using at work. It’s 20 month of going to school full time.  16 hours of classroom time a week.  For 20 months.  At a cost of $35,000.

So I work full time.  And now I go to school full time.  I’m going to have to get really disciplined about doing those things that I’ve already been failing at.  And I seriously believe that having the window of opportunity to get those thing done become really small that the likelihood of me doing them will increase.

I guess we’ll see, right?  I started school last night. I have school tonight. I already have 4 chapters of homework to read for tomorrow.  I think I’ll make it to a 10PM meeting tonight. I’m on my way to work now.  I’ll grab something for dinner on my way to school because I live 21 miles from my job and the school is right in between the two.  I’d never be able to make it home in between.

I felt really good about it when I enrolled and then last night when I was riding to school I thought, “WTF am I doing? Do you SERIOUSLY think you can do this? You’re INSANE!”

Everybody juggles stuff, right?  People do this all the time.  Why shouldn’t I be able to do it too?  Why shouldn’t I raise the bar?  Lowering it hasn’t helped.  And the people I work for love me.  They’ll help me adjust my schedule as I need to.

And I’m sober.  I’ve tapped into an unsuspected inner resource that gives me some concrete tools for navigating this. I have people around me that care and I’m not wasting time getting loaded.

Anyway, I have less time now.  But I’m also moving in a direction now, and that’s good.