Almost time to relax

Looks like the world might actually stop spinning on Thanksgiving.

Things have been pretty hectic. A few really huge projects that, so far, have been completed or at least managed to client expectations. One more big deadline on Monday, and then I can breathe.

I still have other projects, which is a good thing, but at least things should slow down somewhat. I've gotten many nagging items done over the past couple of weeks, so I feel like a weight has been lifted.

So what's next for me in this crazy life? Dave and I were talking about that tonight over dessert at La Madeleine (a macaroon and hazelnut latte - mmm). I've always wanted to go back to graduate school. One of the great regrets of my life is not going on right after undergrad. There were a number of people who felt I could do very well in an academic life, but I was hell-bent on settling down.

Now that I'm once again bitten by the academic bug, I just don't know what to work on first.

Dave was telling me about an interview he saw with the guy who owns the Sands Companies. (He's worth about $800 billion). When he was asked what he would do differently if he were a young man again, he said he would go to business school. He said he had accumulated all that knowledge through experience (read: mistakes) over the years, but that he felt he could have done more if he'd had more school.

At one point, I thought about an MBA. But now I don't know. Something tells me that if you aspire to be more or less a freelancer, part of a confederacy of non-conforming marketers, designers, and programmers who regularly refer work to each other but can't tolerate the notion of working for someone else, then who needs an MBA? MBAs are good for people who want to manage organizations, right? That's where you go to be a manager at a company, like, with other people in it. Seems like a waste of energy if I don't want to go there again. And, as I told Dave, at this moment I can't imagine a scenario under which I would like to go back into that environment, whether my name's on the door or not.

Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind at some time in the future.

I love a great many things: fiction, music, science. It almost doesn't matter what I pursue. What I miss is the buzz of original thought. Of finishing the work and taking the test. Of getting the grade. Of starting all over again the next semester.

For now, this is all just pondering. I have a baby coming in 17 weeks, and I'd like nothing more than to breathe him in as much as I can for as long as I can. And then we'll see. I choose to believe that there's lots of time.