And so we have arrived at that time of year, when it can rain relentlessly over a significant amount of time. I saw a stat on Twitter that suggested that if we get rain tomorrow, which is in the forecast, it will set an all-time record for consecutive days of precipitation here in the Triangle. Oh oh. This means that, aside from a walk to pay rent yesterday and a brief period out today, I’ve been confined to these four walls.

And what have I been up to? Well, pondering how to begin seriously laying the course for my next moves in life. It is looking increasingly like I will make a real attempt to enter graduate school, this time in Communications as I probably should have last time. I did a search for Master’s programs, and found one administered entirely online by Queens University of Charlotte, in my hometown. Of course given that it is in fact online, it would hardly matter if the program were on the other side of the country.

I’ve begun having conversations with someone who states her position as Program Manager there, and am starting the process of gathering the documentation I need. She has given me a helpful outline that I will attempt to stick to that should help me finish applying well in advance of the next sessions which get underway in January.

This program puts a lot of emphasis on blogging/social media, networking, understanding audience, and using this knowledge to assist a given organization. This is exactly what I’m looking for.

I do wonder about how the dynamics work when these types of classes are all online. But well the truth these days is that even so-called “on-campus” classes are at least partially done via the Internet. It’s just the new and preeminent paradigm. And of course technology has advanced so much over the last few years that I doubt there’s a whole lot of difference anyway.

If I start now, I suppose I’d finish around the end of 2017. While so doing, I hope to find internship opportunities and make other sorts of connections that will lead me to possible career options once I have concluded.

I know that the biggest challenge will be paying for it. I’m certain that the Division of Services for the Blind will not cover it this time, so I’ll likely have to take out student loans and hope for the best. Still, it’s just time to jumpstart my life and make some stuff happen. I plan to augment the skills I have already gained by taking HTML and WordPress courses with the Cisco Academy for the Vision Impaired a couple of years ago.

And that’s a bit of what I’ve had going on of late. Other than that, I just sprawled on my couch or sat near the computer, reading two different books, as has been the case throughout my 50-book, 50-author challenge: A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson; and Shadows over Paradise, by Isabel Wolff. I like them both for their deep descriptions of nature, but am especially liking the second with its talk of life on tropical Java as experienced by Dutch colonialists just prior to World War 2. An Englishwoman is charged with encapsulating the much older Dutch woman’s story in order to sort of ghost-write her memoir, and as far as I can tell, the story will become a lot bleaker as the Japanese take over and make everyone subservient. It will be an interesting read though, because I’ll get to see a lot of the technique involved in the craft of “Ghosting,” which I may well try to do someday.

So there you have it, a sort of stream-of-consciousness post in order to maintain my burgeoning streak of at least one per week. I suspect that things are really about to get crazy, so stay tuned for the fun.