Anybody who guessed that the post’s subject had to do with resignations gets a cookie.

This past Friday, I put in my notice with my current employer, and my last day will be just before Memorial Day weekend. I will have a week between jobs, and I’ll need the time to get everything ready for all that’s to follow.

A bunch of area schools are having a group open house this Saturday, and I hope to get much closer to my decision as to where I will be going, and more importantly, I want to see what kind of financial aid situation I’d be looking at. After some consideration, I will try for a masters of teaching program (instead of just a plain certification), but I don’t think some of my preferred colleges are offering this. Well, regardless, I know I’ll be a lot certain about everything after Saturday.

I did learn today on the radio that putting pictures of yourself drunk while wearing a pirate had on your Myspace page is a good way to get your teaching certification denied, so I’ll try not to do that.

Ummmm what else. Still buying/selling crap on Ebay, but I’ll be finished with that soon (I mean it this time). I’m still not working on my Rails stuff; I still have the DHH book I bought and haven’t touched. I should really get that going again. This site should be like a hundred times better. Maybe I can start making autonomous blog interfaces and give/sell people subdomains. Wouldn’t you want to be moran.fuffletonia.com!?

Ehh I should write here more often, I forgot all this stufffffff.

P.S. Lost isn’t really all that great and Venture Bros. Season 2 is incredible.

Everything’s coming up Fuffle. Again, lots of sekrit stuff advancing, but once I can talk about it, I will here. For now, here’s my statement for all my shareholders:

schooling – I’m still considering everything I can, but I’m starting to warm up to the Newton Fellowship. Being able to afford to go to school full time, start teaching after a year, under careful guidance and scrutiny, is starting to sound more and more appealing, despite having to teach for four years in the NYC school system. I guess I can apply, and see what other schools are willing to offer me in the meantime, but I’m worried it will be like a college application situation: once you sign under one program, you cannot switch out ever. I ludge my options, though!

website – I changed the colors. Hopefully more technical improvements soon; I still want more than a blog here….except I’m not not sure what. I think when time free increases, ideas will increase.

writing – I wrote a recommendation letter to a scholarship program for a friend. It’s for a study program in China, concentrating on learning full-on Mandarin Chinese. I tried to be as honest as possible, without coming off like some overfluffed hyperbole that’s standard stuff in the worst of letters of recommendation. Regardless of the challenge of putting a person down on a piece of paper, and making sure to touch everything necessary, it was still an awesome experience.

I wish the screaming would start.

As an after-effect of last week’s activites, I’ve realized that, when I want to, I am able to find time for stuff in my life, even for such a “silly” thing as buying and selling collectible cards. I’m always groveling about not having the time or the energy or anything, but this obviously was not the case: if what I’m devoted to interests me, and bonus points if there’s an obvious reward to be had.

This year I’ve come to terms with the fact that I am a slacker. I need to love what I’m doing, or I will not do it very well, at all. This is not necessarily a bad thing, though: I just have to be ambitious enough about changing my life in ways that will always lead me to what I am passionate about. The analogy is a tire stuck in the ground: it spins faster and faster, trying to get somewhere out of it’s mire, and though it’s reached top speed, it’s really going nowhere. That’s the point I’ve been at these last couple of months, and now, nearly covered in mud, and perhaps in a bigger hole than when I started spinning, I’m going to give everything a heavy push in the right direction.

I have decided to go back to school, hopefully this fall, to get a masters degree in teaching. This is something I’ve wanted to do, on and off, throughout my life, but it has always been confused and altered by external, pointless pursuits. Although people contend that I’m well-skilled and knowledged in what I am doing right now, this isn’t good enough for me. Whereas I can work hard, and hone that talent, and continue down this path and use this ability, it would not make me truly happy. In short, there’s certain things I want to accomplish in my life, and, looking down the path I walk right now, these cannot possibly happen.

Externally, someone might call this a “quarter-life crisis”, but this isn’t an idea that came out of nowhere. When I was in college, there was a fellow mathematics major, a year above me, that was also getting a teacher certification, on top of the horrid, endless WPI coursework. I thought, why would somebody go here, and want to put this calibre of education (well, expensive calibre at least) towards such a pursuit? Being an engineering school, with acclaimed alumni in various sectors of technology, I had just assumed everyone around me wanted to be a director at General Electric or CTO of some Fortune 500 company. I never thought, you could pick all of this knowledge up, and put it to good use in that manner. I never worked up the courage to ask her what motives she had (since I probably would’ve come off as condescending at the time, being a dumb kid with delusions of grandeur about myself and everyone around me), but I imagine there had to be some nobility in the decision.

Still, this woman reminded me of my own past, of me as a student, who was told by one of his middle school teachers that I’d find her profession boring, and that, while I might be good at it, I’ll always regret not being able to try and do something else with my “talents”. That teacher’s name is a part of my work laptop password, a morbid reminder of a chance not taken, of advice not reconsidered. Sure, I perhaps might be full of thoughts of “what if..”, but also perhaps I would’ve held contentment with what I was doing, and not overextend myself into the realm of possible lives I could be leading. Instead, I would appreciate what was in front of me.

All I know is, I have to put this plan together, I can figure out the finances as it comes, but I am going to start seriously pursuing this right away. Again, I have to remind myself there Is enjoyment here, there Is a detectable reward, and the rest will follow suit. I might be a slacker, but in my instances of brilliance above that slacking, I will drive myself to brighter shores.