I need to prioritized. I need to categorize. I need to lay the information out in a grid so that it becomes something more solid than ephemeral floaty bits. What projects and priorities need a significant amount of my time and my focus? Family. My family is the foundation, the base line. For the next eighteen plus years, I will be deriving the “why” of almost everything that I do from family. They give me the love that I had been without for so long. They also put up with my shit. That’s something.

Everything that I put effort into must be in some way explicitly related. Job-hunting. That’s an easy one. A steady paycheck with benefits like insurance would return the stability that we’ve lost. That I’ve lost. It’s not a magic wand that will fix me or anybody else, but it would be a major relief. On the flip side, the search for said job is maddening. Every resume that isn’t responded to, every interview that goes nowhere, every rise and fall of hope is maddening. I end lower than where I began. Though it’s the interview process that causes this, I end up feeling like I am perpetuating, fueling, and pulling the lever on my own spiral into worthlessness. But a steady paycheck with insurance would be good for the family. So I continue.

I’ve got it down to a science, so it takes up 3 to 6 hours per week.

Starting my own company, take two. This is similar to the above in that the goal is to bring in money to the family. That’s the primary goal. What it lacks in things like stability, initial pay, and insurance (not to mention long-term benefits like retirement), it adds doing what I love, being my own boss, and putting my morals and ideals into a company. I’ll be able to show that you don’t have to be a dick to succeed in business. I can break the traditional rules, and I’m being given that chance. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that I’m doing this one for family, and not for me.

I’m giving this one about nine hours per week, but that will be going up shortly. Next week is our first focus-on-the-business-and-nothing-else meeting, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Writing. Whoo boy, this one’s loaded. It’s hard to make this one about the family, which means that it’s really not. The webcomic can bring in some money, and it will. So will the sequel, or any other novel that I can actually finish. Pure writing projects take years and years to start returning on the time investment that’s been put into them. I guess that that explains why I haven’t been putting much effort into them. They do serve as a release of stress, and as I told Nikki, they’re a detox of my brainmeats. Since I haven’t been working on them, I’m not sure if that detox would help me with my kid-based frustrations. It’s worth further thought.

I spend about two hours every three weeks on writing. Maybe less.

I now have the opportunity to return to school. President Obama has adopted a federal version of Governor Granholm’s “No Worker Left Behind” program. A new Pell Grant is available for “displaced workers,” which is PC for unemployed. Changing what it’s called doesn’t make me feel any better. Following my gut, I filled out the FAFSA, applied to LCC, and began to sign up for classes. I visited an advisor, picked a couple of possible majors, and plowed forward. My goals were twofold: (1) take a Japanese class, with the end goal of returning to MSU and finishing my degree and (2) get some certifications to help with the job search. At some point, I passed from this into the habit of filling a semester. Didn’t even realize that I’d done it.

I don’t need full-time to accomplish my goals. I don’t multitask for crap, and a full-time class load comes with a lot of homework, and I have difficulty with being interrupted already. These realities were impressed upon me this morning, despite my desire to not acknowledge them. They’re all valid points, and I need to accept them.

I didn’t sign up for a full class load so that I could accomplish a set of goals to improve my family’s life, I did it because I wanted my stuff to matter, too. I wanted to be important, worth something, like I was when I had a job.