Excerpt: A Monument to Indecision

We interrupt the story already in progress to bring you this ground-breaking excerpt.

Here we are, in November.

A year ago, I was staring at a blank Word document at work and came up with nothing more than a tongue-in-cheek poem in honor of National Novel Writing Month. (Or “NaNoWriMo”, but spelling it out increases my word count....) My not having the time to write had little to do with the problem. Nor did the fact that I spent the bulk of my day at work, as I was virtually invisible at my job. I was, however, supposed to be working on my thesis for a computer science master's degree that I started (on a very part-time basis) about six years ago.

That, and I was very pregnant. Which in itself didn't keep me from writing, but I was tired and hormonal and distracted and paranoid et cetera.

A year later, I still have not completed said thesis. And I'm no longer pregnant – instead I have a crawling almost-walking eight-month-old baby boy who has just started eating the mail that I carelessly left on a table within his reach....

Fifteen minutes and a dirty diaper later....

Where was I? Ah, things that have changed since last year. Well, I'm no longer at my old job, either, a fact that has brought me much joy this year. Not nearly as much as my son, of course, but joy nonetheless. I attributed my resignation to wanting to be a stay-at-home mom, but that was only half of the truth; I hated it there. I didn't want to spend the rest of my career there.

Now I stay at home during the day. It's a blessing and a lot of fun. However, I keep myself busy at three jobs. Yes, three! I work approximately 25 hours a week, mostly in the evenings, as a math teacher and tutor, a substitute teacher in the local high school district, and a substitute dance teacher. (On a side note, I spend far more time actually working now than I ever did at my old job....) I bring home about a third of the salary that I used to make, but it has been worth it.

The thing that goads me is how easy it has been to make the transition back to education. See, getting a teaching credential was my original plan all along, but then I wanted to further explore my interest in programming and started taking computer science classes. After getting married, I spent almost a year on a fruitless job hunt; it wasn't until I went to a college job fair and made it known that I was pursuing a computer science degree (and dropped the names of a few family members) that I finally got hired, at a well-paying aerospace company. I could have applied to a bunch of tutoring places, school districts, dance studios, music studios and the like back then, but it didn't occur to me at the time. In any case, without that job, we wouldn't have bought a house, and couldn't have afforded to continue going to school....

So, I don't regret having started the degree – it kick started a lot of things in our lives. But now that I have left the career that it helped me start, I feel...silly. It's hard to be motivated at this point. Also, I chose not to take an easy route with my thesis project proposal, and probably bit off more than I could chew with my project and am too stubborn to admit it.

And this year, I actually came up with a half-formed plot and story for my NaNo story, and even managed to write just over 1,000 words (only 49,000 to go!). But a week later, I find myself puzzling over where it's going and whether it's worth the effort to find out.

My husband asked me two days ago which I preferred: to stick with my original thesis proposal, or to actually finish my thesis. Because I could always write a new proposal, on something a little more in my comfort zone, and just be done with it.

Similarly, I could try to write a well-thought-out fantasy adventure story in the remaining twenty-two days of this month, or I could write about what it has been like this year having a son, changing careers, wrangling junior high kids and tackling the thesis of doom...and maybe hit the 50K mark for the first time since 2003.

I have a decision to make before the month is out: to make decent progress on implementing the algorithm I have been studying for my project proposal, or to complete a new project proposal in time for the new semester.

But one decision has been made: I want to hit 50,000 words, so farewell Brem and Ava (the main characters in my original story idea) and hello slightly frazzled mom slash part-time teacher and graduate student.

Lucky you.