One of the things I love about being in the greater Raleigh area is that Amazon deliveries come fast. Living in Wilmington, NC and Fort Walton Beach, FL was a nightmare as Amazon deliveries showed up a week later. Now, it’s next day or even same day.
Capitalism gripes aside, this morning I ordered a couple of packs of pastel-colored post-it notes, pastel-colored highlighters, and a set of 0.5mm Pilot Precise V5 pens. Yes, I’m a stationery nerd.
I wanted to have supplies to highlight my textbooks and add thoughts to them that wouldn’t ruin them. The highlighters are gorgeous and they’re double-sided, with one side being a pen and the other the wider highlighter nib.
I also intend to take some of the courses in my to-do list and write them on to the post-it notes, then stick those on my wall so that I have a real-life kanban board of sorts. This helps me easily keep track of what I’m working on and what I have on the backburner.
Right now I’m trying to keep it simple, though I’m dying to start some of the other courses on my list.
I’m just doing the Codecademy R class, the Qualitative Research Coursera class, and soon, the Animal Behavior class with UW (starts in a few days time).
This is all, I think, only possible because I’ve “gone contract” with my employer. It took months of planning to get to this point (sometimes I wish I’d just quit) but I’m hoping it will tide me over so that I have some income but reduced hours in order to allow me to focus on learning and studies.
I forsee next year being the start of my Masters, likely in England, and possibly after that, a PhD. But, at 38…it all feels like I’m chasing the clock…