baby you've got to be more demanding

This week is shaping up pretty well, despite its depressing start; I had more meetings today, but enough free time to get stuff done, and it looks like I have a couple of free hours every day this week. Granted, I had an eight a.m. meeting, and I also had to restart my allergy shots, but things could have been much worse.

In fact, there were several highlights. One was lunch with Gyre; we spent it in our usual combination of reminiscing about olden days and discussing the latest news and speculations. Another was a one-on-one with Alan, who was my manager before I went on leave last year. While I worked fourteen to sixteen hours a day for months on end and completely burned myself out in the process, I learned a lot from that experience, and it was good to catch up with him and get his perspective on what I should do with my life. I balanced it with dinner with Terry, who gave me a slightly different but no less valuable perspective -- nice of her to listen, since she has her own stresses, and it will be sad when she moves away next year :(

My struggle, as I've reiterated many times, is trying to decide between business and writing; while yesterday I was all about repudiating my corporate whoredom, I awoke this morning remembering how happy I am to have not just sunglasses, but the ability to heat my apartment, and heat is one of those 'essentials' that writers seem to do without in the name of their art. Ugh.

So the advice that I'm getting from sensible sources is that I should get an MBA. And in some respects I agree -- for example, it could help me to switch gears and move into publishing, if I want to stay in business but do something a bit more creative. The downside is that I don't want to be saddled with $100,000+ in debt and *then* become successful as a writer, since paying off student loans while living in a hovel with no heat seems beyond miserable. But the other downside is that I don't want to spend several years trying to make it as a writer, only to let the business ship pass me by.

I was going to do something stupid like wish away one of my talents, but that's silly -- talents are good to have, even if my particular set of talents is currently driving me crazy rather than making my life easier. I just wish the path would open up ahead of me -- but that's not going to happen. And tomorrow I'll go back to thinking about getting an MFA, and I'll likely oscillate between MBAs, MFAs, and writing full-time every day for the next few months at least. But regardless, if I'm applying to school, I want to do it in fall of 2009 for fall of 2010 -- Alan implied that I'm getting a bit long in the tooth for b-school (or, if I'm not long in the tooth yet, will be in a couple of years -- and the top schools don't look so fondly on people over thirty). If I go for the MFA instead, I want to get started on that transition as quickly as possible too. And in any event, I don't want to wake up on my thirtieth birthday in the same job and in the same unpublished state with my romance novels...something's gotta give.

But right now, sleep is the most important thing on my agenda. Goodnight!