movement

I've spent the last several days thinking about my immediate future. Reexamining old goals, taking a critical look at my current employment situation, pondering my future employability.

Like many INFP's I tend to get caught up in overanalyzing things. Running iteration after iteration through a scenario. There comes a point though when you have to stop. One has to end the repetition for after a time it becomes pointless and paralyzing.

One has to MOVE.

Today was a movement day.

I cut my teeth in the computing industry. Not believing that having a piece of paper was important in order to get a good job as long as you can show that you know your chops, I never completed work on a college degree. I've been back to school off and on over the last 25 years, slowly accumulating a strange mishmash of credits while I've bounce around, unsure what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Now, when you are in your twenties, or even your early thirties, the lack of a degree isn't as much of an issue as you might think. Especially not in the early days of the late 80's, early 90's in the computing industry. Once you reach your forties though things start to change. If you've never had management experience one finds securing a decent job an increasingly tough proposition. As the industry has aged, the mavericks, of which I am one, become a hard sell to management. Your management gets younger, you get older, and they look down their noses at the 'supposedly' unskilled help.

If you want to move out of the work environment you've called home for 25 years you tend to find your hands tied. Even if you want to stay in your industry, you find moving to a new company at a comparable pay level tough. Everything now reads that it requires a bachelors degree with some experience preferred. In a lot of ways the bachelors degree has become devalued into nothing more than a ticky-box for HR to check when vetting an application. If you don't have one, you get put in the less desirable pile. If you are in the less desirable pile, you tend to not get a second look.

I don't have a degree. I now believe that I NEED one.

I've toyed with the idea of getting one quite a bit over the last 10 years but have never been able to consistently focus the time and energy needed to secure one. I've started looking at distance learning programs. Especially programs that offer a catch-all sort of bachelors degree. One that will maximize the scattershot nature of my college past. One that perhaps offers a way to convert my rather focused work life to my benefit.

I believe I've found such an accredited college and program.

Today, I moved. The time of being caught in an endless loop, iterating through options, thoughts, ideas, has come to an end. I moved, and felt the stasis that had been gripping me on this topic creak, bend, then shatter around me. Forms have been filled out and sent. Transcripts have been queued for delivery. The collecting and documenting of life experiences has started.

With any luck 2008 will be the year I gain my bachelors degree. One more thing accomplished. More paths will be opened, more travels possible, for The Digital Bohemian.