Musings

The question is, who do you really want to be, and what are you going to do about it?

The above is a quote from an article called “The Fantasy of Being Thin” by Kate Harding (source here). I found many things about the article to be interesting and thought-provoking but those two questions stuck in my mind. Perhaps because I have slowly been trying to ask myself these questions but keep shying away. I’ve been taking baby steps – there is a page from Langara College with Bookkeeping courses on my fridge. I’ve taken a cursory view of Masters available in English in Norway.

When I first graduated from University I seriously considered applying to the teaching program at UBC. I reviewed the two-year teacher education program for primary school and ultimately decided that more debt and a second BA were not what I needed. A few years into my time in the corporate world I again revisited my options at UBC. Library and Archival Sciences are very interesting topics and the idea of being a librarian is an appealing one.

Both of theses professions have the difficulty that in British Columbia, you start in on-call assignments unless you’re lucky enough to land a job. Even securing a job is not a guarantee as funding is a precarious arrangement with schools and libraries closing each year. Three years ago I was certain that I was going to attend the archival Masters program at UBC – how I was going to come up with the tuition was a mystery. Desires aside, the practicality of funding yet another degree is the most prohibitive factor in the question: what do I want to do now?

I think what I need to invest most in is honesty and reflection. I can’t continue making decisions as I have, leaping into something and hoping that it will all work out. Before I’ve had goals leading me into those leaps and now I find that my desire has lessened. I am no longer interested in finishing a Master writing degree, getting that two book contract or working in editing. What does still interest me is literacy. Words still interest me. Expression still interests me. Creating new media to get people interested in literacy and the way words and pictures are interpreted interests me.

I want to share these interests with other people. I want to talk about the feelings people experience when they say, I don’t read as much as I should. What do we mean by “should”?