it's set...

It's all set. Feb 23rd, 9 am, I'll start teaching my first private pilot ground school.

It's to a scouting group. They are even providing the space to teach the class. The badge requirements are that they attend a ground school built out of the Jep text. Be ready to take the written when done. Actually taking the written isn't needed. But I hope at least a few decide to go forward with it. It would be very cool to light the fire in someone about flying.

I've worked out a deal with my old CFI who's an ASA dealer to provide us the e6b and protractors at cost for the group. I'm trying to keep the cost as cheap as possible for them.

It's pretty neat to be in a position to finally be able to use the AGI certificate I got last year. Now to build out the lessons. This is the hard part. That and facing my first class.......

My current plan is 8 in class sessions. One trip to the airport after the first 4 classes that cover the airplane, what makes it fly, instruments, and the like, for a touch and feel with a real airplane so they can hopefully connect book stuff with real world stuff. Then back to the classroom for the last 4 classes, covering weather, regs, cross country planning and the like. For the last session I've talked with some friends who have volunteered themselves and their planes to hop the class members for a local flight. So 10 weeks total, 8 class sessions, 2 airport field trips, 2 hours every saturday morning.

At the end.. Maybe, some of them will want to start flight training. I need to prepare a fact sheet for the local CFI's and schools at the 3 airports nearest them.

This is the sort of thing I want to do, perhaps, most of all...

when just you think...

When just you think that you've figured it out. That the world wants you to abandon one thing, or at least push it to the background of your life. Something happens. Your world is tossed topsy turvey.

This has happened to me in the last 3 days. After trying for nearly a year now to find a place, a way, to teach a Private Pilot ground school. After giving it up as an unobtainable goal because I'm not attached to a flight school. I'm an oddity in having an Advanced Ground Instructor certificate while not being a true Flight Instructor.

An opportunity fell into my lap.

So it would seem that in less than a month I'll be facing my first class of students. A scouting group working on a badge wants to go through a FAA ground school. To be exposed to aviation, and perhaps, for one or two of them, to take the written.

Never give up. The universe provides.

student id

Things continue to move along on the degree front.

I received an email from the school yesterday. I'm accepted into the undergrad program. They've assigned me a student ID and password for the blackboard system.

From here I'll be able to watch when my transcripts arrive. As well as how they are applied into the degree plan. Hopefully I'll be able to tell if they've been able to use the other documentation I forwarded them on Monday.

I don't mind stating that I'm nervous about this entire process. I've got a good friend who has her degree from these folks. They worked with her and she's good to go. I'm hoping to have similar success. The unknown though, it haunts me. My problem is that I think too much, run down too many paths, always looking for the flaws, the hangups, the problems. It's part of what paralyzes me in getting things done.

It's all sent off though. All I have to do is wait now and see. The waiting is hard for me. It's so easy for me to spin off somewhere else, thinking that this will all be for naught. Focus though is key. I'm currently working through a CLEP guide for an exam. If I need a few credit hours I hope to fulfill the requirements via CLEP. This keeps my mind occupied, my thoughts focused. Hopefully it'll ease the angst of waiting.

Still, I have a student id now. It's a start...

offers

There is something disingenuous to an offer when you go to take someone up on it and it is retracted.

I worked somewhere close to 13 hours on Sunday. My boss, surprised that I did, and that I was in at 7 am this morning to finish up the tapes offered to let me take a day off this week. I thought for a moment, checked the department schedule and said "fine, how about Friday?"

"Oh! Can't do that", I hear. It seems that he's going to take the day off, just hasn't run it by our big boss yet. Can't have off next Monday either as our helpdesk is out that day.

Forget it... It's not worth it this week.

Still, shouldn't offer what you won't deliver.

paper...

I spent a bit of my downtime today collecting information. Paperwork to send to the university I am applying to. You see, they offer credit for certifications you may have collected in your outside life.

So I've collected not only my old networking certifications and made copies, but also made copies of my FAA pilots certificates. Written a few cover letters so that tomorrow I can get them notarized and in the mail.

It'll be interesting to see how much, if any, credit they will extend for these hours, days, months of my past life spent in the scaling of various cliffs of knowledge.

I'll let you know!

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.

just push on...

It's been a rough start to 2008 for The Digital Bohemian. I found out late last year that a good friend was dying. He passed early New Years morning.

I could go on for hours and pages about my friend. About his life, his accomplishments, his family. I won't though.

If there is one thing that my friend showed me over and over, is that no matter what life hands you, just push on. Decide, move forward and see what life brings next. He hadn't had an easy life, family, business, friends. There was only one thing that ever slowed him down, and it's a lesson that I have learned from him well in what not to do.

I've made progress in the last two years on life long ambitions. I've got a few more waiting in the wings that have been stalled. Stalled by other issues in my life that I can't go into here. I shall borrow a page from my friends life story though. Just push on. Decide, move forward, see what life brings next to me. INFP's easily become paralyzed by too many options, too many choices, too many fears. My friend wouldn't let himself become paralyzed, even after he heard the bad news in September. He pushed on, he moved forward with as much dignity as his illness allowed. He tied up things he needed to.

My friend blazed a trail for me to follow. He taught me an important lesson in his final months. Just push on. If he could do it even to the end, then the blocks to my ambitions are trivial.

Just push on. So you can see what life brings next.

I will...