The path not taken.

Lately, as you can tell from my past few posts, I have been suffering from something akin to writer's block. It's not that I don't have anything to write about, it is more that I don't think that those thoughts are really ready for sharing, and they require more revision. It has also been a challenge lately to find time to do anything constructive when there are so many needs in your life.

In the past, in a time when I once had a job, I used to set aside $50 out of every pay check as "me" money. I would take this "me" money and use it when the urge struck where I wanted something that I didn't need. It was my way of rewarding myself with something that wasn't fiscally prudent without wrecking my budget. Granted, it also got raided when emergencies, like major car repairs, struck also.

As you can figure out, in about a year's time, that's enough money to buy a decent laptop. Or several game consoles. Or that new toy, I mean, gadget that came out. With this money, I was able to satisfy part of my desire to own things I couldn't afford to have but didn't need. Such as buy that nice bicycle that I have mentioned previously. (Which, according to forecasts, may be used this Friday, if it gets as warm as it is supposed to.)

Now that my budget is quite an interesting shade of red (as opposed to black and free of debt), well, there isn't any "me" money to be had. I must console myself with the trite sounding promise, "When I get a job again, I will get that." Instead, I am now prioritizing my needs by how urgently they require my attention. As in which credit card bill needs to be paid more urgently today?

It has been an interesting February. I hazard to guess that March will be more of the same. I have already used up a ream of paper in printing resumes and oddly, even though there are jobs to be had, they are only interested in full time employees. Which leads me to a great dilemna: Do I quit school and go back to working to head off the spiralling debt?

What a waste of a year and a quarter as well as tens of thousands of dollars. I say this because it is unlikely that the position I take will permit me to take more than night classes. For an engineering degree, a year and a half's worth of classes that I need to finish can stretch out as much as a decade due to scheduling of classes offered and whether or not the job I accept will permit me the time to take the classes. I spent four and a half years at a company that wouldn't permit me to take time off to go to classes. I fear that my next employer will be as immovable.

Perhaps this is merely a case of what ifs. Sadly, I must consider this as a real possibility when I prioritize my needs. I have been agonizing over this for several long weeks now. If I don't quit my education, I won't have money to pay off the ever increasing debt. This will cause me to enter the hellish place of being constantly harrassed by debt collectors. Somehow, if I make it through these few months, I will be able to get a summer job and start earning income again. In the end, I will likely be an engineer.

If I quit now, I can count on the money I paid for this semester (you only have one week to drop classes without financial penalty) not being recouped. In getting a full time job, this means I won't have time for my degree, postponing the completion date and diminishing the likelihood of becoming an engineer. If not ending the opportunity altogether. Each option is fraught with implications and consequences.

Worse of all, my grades have slipped because I have not been studying, I have been worrying. I am saddened and disappointed because I suspect I know what my decision will be and don't want to walk that path yet. A real question for me has been which of these two choices is the lesser of two evils? Much like the poem by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken, I find that I am choosing a path that will not permit me to walk down that other path, and I wonder if this decision will be something I look back upon with similar regret, because it will be the difference.