Otherwise, back to the subject, I’m thinking more along the lines of seminary right now, more than secular school. Though I wouldn’t rule out the latter. I worked my way through school, so I don’t have any debt, which is nice, but any school I’d want to be going to now would be outrageously expensive. Such are the times. It’s practical matters like that which really put me off the idea.

I really do want to be wasting less time doing things that take time away from these things which I do well and enjoy doing more. I do my work very well indeed, but I really have trouble standing it sometimes. It seems like an absurd joke sometimes: do this one thing for most of your day so that you’ll be able to afford to buy the books so you can do this other thing at night and on the weekends which you do better (judging solely from an objective comparison of feedback between the two) and which you enjoy, find fulfilling, and of value to the greater world.

And like you, I don’t really regret not going to grad school “at the proper time.” I would’ve hated it, I’m sure. I was fed up with the department I was in after seeing a really nasty political play go on. It soured me on the whole affair. As I told some friends last week when we were talking about this very subject, “I didn’t want to be a fifty year old three year old.” Now I can say that part of me regrets that decision. But also, I can honestly say that if I’d remained in the department, my interests would probably not be precisely what they are now, and I might be just as unhappy at whatever that was. I have such a breadth of things that I dabble in now, hither and yon, that are all tied together in various ways, but there’s no real program to cover that either. And frankly, I still have those nightmares about showing up to class and there’s a test and I don’t even know what class it is, much less whatever’s going to be on the test. You’d think those would stop after a while! Having to perform in a real classroom setting, when it’s not on my schedule–would that work? Would I resent the equation of this fun stuff with my “freedom”–the time away from work? I certainly think that’s a part of it. But, like I said earlier, if we’re doing something good, we should share it properly. I guess it’s figuring that “properly” out where the issue lies right now.

Anyhow, I’m probably just babbling at this point.

Thanks for opening the conversation. I would love to hear what you are thinking of yourself.

I do have some ideas that I am turning over in my head and some seem better than others. To tell the truth I was not full of tons of original ideas when I was at university. It is more from working on my own later and through many different experiences that I have developed my own perspective. I don’t really regret not going on to grad work at that time.

The trouble right now is that I have a finger in too many pies. I have some very diverse interests. However, I am taking a course right now, and something might come of it.