My letter is almost done (they keep saying) and I know I need to start thinking about what happens next. What happens next is… waiting. A lot of waiting. I am not so good at waiting.

I think it might help if I got really busy. Being busy helps me keep from being sad. The past few years it’s been easy to come up with all kinds of fun projects to do, to keep my mind occupied. But I think it’s time for me to look seriously at getting back into education.

UNC has a doctoral program that is exactly what I want. Just have to figure out how the hell I’m going to go back to school at nearly 40… I did have a nice meeting with the director of the program. She wasn’t terribly helpful but she wasn’t discouraging, either. It’s just another long list of things to do. I have to take the GRE again, and these days it’s a totally different test from the number-two-pencil test I took years ago. I have to fill out lots of forms and find a bunch of money. I need 3 letters of recommendation, from professors. That’s going to be a problem. I haven’t been a student in well over a decade, so I don’t even know where to start with that one. (sigh)

But if I could do this, even if it takes years going to evening classes part time, I would have a teaching certificate and a PhD and I could have the kind of job I still lie awake dreaming of.

And I would have something to do while I’m waiting.