There are a lot of things I should be doing right now. Between work, moving, and school, there has been little time for much else and I am beginning to feel it. I’ve been surly, argumentative, dismissive, and downright mean at times. I’ve also tended to avoid interaction with people since the few hours I get seem to be so dwindling. There is a lot of good going on in my life, but I feel so buried right now that it is hard to step back and enjoy it.

I’m not alone. In fact, most of you who read this are probably living lives at equally high speeds. We jet from moment to moment never really taking the time to see things of value. We lose track of what is important. The minutiae becomes all encompassing and we drown in it.

So, we stop. We breathe. We take a moment and pause. The world is not as important as we think. All this crap that seems important, isn’t. I choose to resist. I choose not to be buried. I choose to relax.

There are things to actually worry about, but so many of our concerns are so terribly trivial. So many of my concerns are so terribly trivial. Maybe, just maybe, we should remember that.

Of course…It could never be simple.

This summer marks my last term at Kirkwood. I am all set to go at the University of Iowa this fall. Classes are registered for and I am actually moving into the new apartment next week. Everything seemed so nice and resolved. As everything started to settle down, you just know something had to go wrong.

The situation is a simple one. I have two required classes left and both of those I elected to take online. With the chaos of the summer, I thought it was the smartest move. What I didn’t know was that the classes were moving to a new format this semester and while one of my classes is doing quite well at using the new software the other is, well, seriously problematic. This poor presentation and oddly established requirements make the class quite annoying and may negatively affect my grade. My usual response is to drop the class. After all, this is my education, I deserve to get what I paid for. Unfortunately, the only other available course that meets my requirement (which I need fulfilled before fall) is only open to people in a specific program. That means I get to call and beg a boon from someone I have never met before. It’s not something I am looking forward to, but what can you do? I need this. My only other option is to continue the online class which, quite frankly, is my very last resort (Yes, it is that bad!).

I dropped off the face of the earth last week. In fact, I am only now gently rejoining the land of the living. The cause of my abrupt departure from all forms of communication was an illness. I’ll be honest, I am not even sure what illness I had. At first, I thought is was a nasty cold, but the aches, pain, and sheer exhaustion were more indicative of the flu. Yet, there was no fever. In fact, throughout the entire three day span of my illness I barely registered more than a one degree boost in temperature.

That said, it was rough. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t work. All I did was sleep, take copious amounts of differing medications, and generally try to stay alive. I missed days of work. I missed a quiz in Sociology and I am way behind in my Art course. In fact, I am probably going to eat the cost and drop that course. Getting behind in that class is a death sentence and I am not willing to sacrifice grades for illness. Actually, that’s not entirely true. The truth is that I really don’t like the Art class. It feels clumsily put together and the work does little to engage me. It’s just not a good fit. Luckily, there is an Philosophy course open for the second half of the summer session that will fit what I need. I am going to concentrate on getting caught up in my other classes and take that as my final class.

In other news, the move is coming up as is my birthday. My philosophy course is eating our moving expenses so Court and I are moving ourselves. Ah well…luckily we don’t have a lot of stuff!

If you contacted me last week. The odds are that I haven’t read or listened to it. I know I was pinged by several of you and I am sorry for my absence of reply. I am going to catch everything up this week!

I’m off to start on that now!

On Friday, this old man did something that terrified him. To be fair, my terror didn’t come from any rational place. The whole affair was rather serene and unremarkable. Instead, it arose from the sheer enormity of what I was doing. In this one day, I entered the next chapter in my pursuit of the kind of life I want to lead. So what was this great occasion that left me so stressed and worried. It was nothing more than Orientation and Registration for my first round of classes as an English major at the University of Iowa.

It doesn’t sound like much, I know. Thousands of people do it every year. The only real difference between us is that I am somewhat older than many of them. Even there, though, I am neither unique nor even the oldest. My fear arose from the fact that I am taking one hell of a risk on something of incredible importance to me. There is no guarantee of success after all, and failure would hurt more than just my pocketbook. That’s not to say that the pocketbook is not a factor, though. After all, I actually took loans for the first time for my junior year. I have now made an investment of time and money. More than that, though, I have placed a good deal of my ambition into this venture and failure would indeed be hard to swallow. To that end, I am now in this come hell or high water and I will be until the bloody end. I am looking forward to that challenge.

So, here I am, hanging out at science station. It’s not too bad a gig. I get to have a computer and get paid nearly what I make at my full time job. lol. Pretty sad.

So much is going on, and I don’t know exactly what to say to elaborate, but once I have more words, i’ll let you know!

Just a quick note, but one that I think is relatively important. I am not going to be hosting anyone else’s site going forward. This is now the second time I have had to clean an iframe injection attack off my sites because of a site that I was kind enough to host. In this case it was for my mother and she never touched the site. So it sat idle, without updates, and was just ripe for the picking. That site is now gone.

I keep my sites secure, but my security means nothing if others are leaving the door wide open. Thus, no more. If you want a great deal on hosting, I can get you that. Also, if any of you experience any warnings when accessing this site, please let me know. I try to keep ahead of the issues, but vulnerabilities do happen. Now, back to our regular posting!

Woah, things really did slow down there didn’t they? Sorry guys, I’m still here and I intend to be here a bit more often in the coming weeks. Courtney and I have been dealing with a variety issues involving the upcoming move to Iowa City and my registration at the University of Iowa. Hopefully, everything will transfer over just fine and I will be about two years away from my useless English degree! Go me!

Nah, it isn’t as dire as that. I’m still not sure how I want turn this degree into a career, per se, but several ideas are percolating. I am actually thinking about attending the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, though. Previously, I was looking at Literary Theory or something along those lines, but I think that was still masking my simple fear of putting my work out there. I need to bridge that. I love the idea of new media and literature, but I don’t just want to study it. I want to create it. So, I may be switching a few things around. Luckily, it is still early and I can do that.

Luckily, my summer is not all that intense and I do love my poetry class. I get to leave work early twice a week and discuss poetry for two hours. The only thing better would be do be writing and discussing a variety of art and literature full time. Soon, my friends….soon.