And here I said I was done with school.

We all should have known better.

The other day I came thisclose to signing up for an online course on web design & development through my alma mater. I stopped just short of clicking the "payment options" button when common sense grabbed hold of me, gave me a gentle shake, and reminded me that I'm currently sans home computer, which might tend to make it a bit difficult to do the homework. Grumble and sigh.

Next semester, I'm signing up. I might take a graphics design class, too, if they offer it online. Why? Because my company will pay for my continuing education, and I'll be damned if I'm not going to take full advantage of it this time around (the last time I worked for a company with a tuition reimbursement program, I kept putting it off, and then when I finally got around to trying to go back to school on the company's dime they gave me a heads up that I would be getting a pink slip and told me not to bother applying for it. Lesson learned).

The other reason is that I'm now wisened enough to understand the need for an enjoyable way to pay the bills; that even if/when I finally manage to scale the walls surrounding PubLand, I'll most likely join the ranks of the hardworking, job-having, low-to-mid-list peasants. I understand that my chances of making it into the Castle of the Best Selling Scribes to hang out and write full time with King Stephen and his courtiers are right up there with getting struck by lightening while waving my winning lottery ticket around. And wow, did that metaphor take on a life of its own. But the point is, I know now the necessity of having a good day job, and I really don't want to have to handle paper and people for the rest of my working life.

It's not that I don't like my current job. I'm immensely blessed to be working with a group of incredibly nice and laid back people, for a company with awesome benefits that expresses genuine concern for its employees' well-being. Right now I'm in a pretty good situation; but I know that it only takes one jerkweed to sprout up and choke all the joy out of an office. So I'm hedging my bets, because really, things here are just too good to remain the status quo. Even if it does last, while I may love the situation, the work itself isn't anything to get excited about, and I can't really see myself doing it for more than five years without suffering some pretty serious ennui.

Ideally, by that point Matt will be done with school and making enough money to support a whole family so that I can stay home and write and raise babies; but we don't live in an ideal world, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that it's good to be prepared for less than ideal circumstances, and education and training never hurt. Especially when they're free.

I've made stabs at web design in the past. I was fairly good at it, considering the limited tools at my disposal, and I enjoyed the heck out of it. There's something akin to writing in web design. I'm not going to be so pretentious as to say a web page layout tells a story, but it still comes down to using language to shape something for other people to enjoy, which is probably why I got so much out of it as a hobby. There's just something addictive about creating something, having control over its shape and substance. That probably also explains why I'm so into knitting.

Anyway. Much as I like tinkering with web pages, I've been out of practice for long enough that the web has passed me by and left my HTML and CSS1 skills in the dust. So if I can get up to speed, especially without it costing me a thing, well, then, why the hell not? Even if I never get published, I'll always think of writing as my career. But if I could eventually have a second career in web design, that I not only enjoy but that actually makes money? That would be pretty keen, too.