Since I want to expand my horizons (and as a result, my wallet), I’ve decided to take a course via Coursera on basic programming. I know HTML and CSS and can suss out PHP, but if I’m going to rake in that sweet, sweet consultant money someday, I think that learning how to do some more programming would be in my best interests. I’ll probably even fork over the $40 for the verified certificate so I can put the thing on my resume and look totally legit.

Consulting… it’s weird, because when I think about it, the title doesn’t seem the least bit appealing. However, Problem-Solving Wizard does sound incredibly fun, and that’s the main reason why I’m drawn to the idea of consulting/analysis. I love to look at processes, not just at work, but interpersonally as well. I want to know what makes something go whoosh, and if it can be improved upon, and let me tell you… it can always be improved upon. The trick is finding out a way to do so that is great both for the human element as well as the business element, and while many would argue that those ideals cannot coexist together, I don’t think that’s true.

… but that could be blind optimism.

Work has been strange lately, in that where I’m heading now is completely different than where I was heading six months ago. At the time, I was getting ready to start my temporary position as a quality assurance trainer, which seemed to involve a small amount of teaching and a larger amount of… creative interpretation. In the end, it involved a fair amount of training, an equally fair amount of teaching (more on that in a bit), and a tremendous amount of patience.

The thing that’s been the most fulfilling has been the work I’ve been able to do with our process manager on our documentation. I’ve been able to not only use my cobwebbed writing skills on adding and revising document types, but I’ve also been able to clean up the code quite a bit in the process. The last assistant was using Microsoft Word as a WYSIWYG HTML editor. Oh my lord, was that a complete nightmare. Random <o:p> and <span> tags galore. It was a nightmare beyond belief.

It’s just so hard, because while I want to keep doing that, I know that I can be making a lot more than my meager salary as an Office Assistant Lead. I like the team I work with, but… I want to have nice things! I don’t want to feel like I can only afford to pay certain bills at a time. I want to be able to do these things I enjoy while also having a title that reflects my skill level. However, in having a meeting with our HR representative, I feel like I may have accidentally singed some bridges. I had so many questions about all of the job processes, and in trying to get clarification for my peace of mind, I may have traded in some goodwill for a bit of retaliation.

This is just a whole big case of

There’s not enough time!
There’s never enough time.

I’m always wanting to do something and somehow, I find myself thinking about it more than actually doing it. Sometimes I’ll even go as far as to actually buy the things I need to actually create the things I dream about, but some way or another, I manage to psych myself out of doing it somehow. I’m strangely non-committal when it comes to the actual act of doing things. It’s maddening.

For example, I have wanted to make custom DS cases, create loads of plushies, make tiny slime keychains, decorate pottery, make my own clothes, recreate an 8-bit scene via cross-stitch, embroider dish towels, fix up my cameras (all six of them), create a darkroom, take up a vegetarian diet, make my own yogurt, learn how to dance, play bingo, frame all of my best photos, learn a programming language, play all of Imagine games and maintain a tumblr on the project, keep a spark file for my poetry, go back to school…

My spare bedroom isn’t full of things, but it feels like it is. There’s a bookshelf with fabrics, glue, and other crafting odds and ends on it. A sewing machine collects dust. I have sketched out a custom label for the goods I’ll be making, but don’t quite have the nerve to follow through with it. An old metal record bin is the perfect size for all the scrapbooking paper I’d be more willing to use if work didn’t make me so paper-averse.

Having hobbies is expensive, and being creative is exhausting. I don’t know how not to have ideas constantly bombarding me, though. I’m creative to a fault, and it would be much easier if I were boring and straightforward, but I don’t have that luxury. Oh, what it would be like to be creative and well-off!

This is the soundtrack to my creative moment. Time to write a thing about making dating into an RPG!