It may have been years ago when people sought to be loyal to their families, get a solid education and make something of their lives. But now something ugly has taken over, like there’s a huge hole in our systems that has always been there and somehow being in the spotlight, facetiously loved by the masses and being rich will fill it.

Everyone wants to be recognized, respected, adored… but not in any tender and real manner. It is almost as if that simply does not exist in our minds. Instead, a new breed of aspiration has consumed us.

I am a practitioner of this as well. When I see heels I really like or a purse that I feel will accessorize my look I definitely am attracted to it, but then I ask myself what really is the purpose of this?

Women have always been cosmetic but is it something new and awful that makes us so completely dehumanized that we seek to fulfill our apparent purposes through cosmetic soul searching?

I wanted to study to improve myself, to improve my life, but sometimes it just feels like if I was interested in being pretty all my life I could try to be in show business and reap even greater rewards, but something in my system feels like it couldn’t stomach pursuing success in that manner.

I’m still very busy doing all my research in regards to distance education. It’s still quite a feat to try to find some place that has everything I want, but I guess in the end you have to make compromises once in a while.

Money is also tight - going to be moving at the end of the month and I’m pretty stressed about that, so I don’t know if college is really the best thing to do, but I guess it keeps me hopeful.

This is what we all want - what I want. To be free to taste the blue waters of some tropical paradise. Learning, learning, we don’t want to learn but we have to learn, educate ourselves, make the money, get a career, retire, and end up here when we can barely enjoy it. I want it now, I want it now.

This blog I am creating completely fresh is all about my adventures in trying to balance working at the Nike Store in the Denver mall AND trying to pursue a degree online, in night school so to speak, via an online college.

Now, obviously, the first task that is involved in this endeavor is to budget myself for the education I want, what I want to achieve with that education, and of course, how much time and money I can invest in this. I have lived long enough partying, waking up in someone else’s bed with someone else’s stank all over me. Thankfully I’ve gotten out of my drug and crazed world relatively unharmed, and accordingly, am now going to pursue studying whenever I can.

(Now, I create a parenthesis here to point out that even though I am a boyfriend addict for all intents and purposes, and even though online colleges have less frat parties than real-world ones, I intend to meet cute boys through my online courses and do, you know, whatever girls and boys do)

Budget: Maybe 5-10k a year. Maybe. I mean, I’d probably have to borrow money, but do online colleges really charge that much money? Probably.

Time: Okay, I work every day, all day, selling shoes to little jerks. Nevertheless, studying at night and clicking little buttons on my college website should be easy enough.

Focus: As I said, I’m a boyfriend addict. So even though I like boys, I do need to side step that and focus on books pretty seriously. I want to do this, so I will do it.

Okay, sounds good. Now, when perusing online colleges I’ve found a number of ‘issues’ with the general stance on them. Namely, most people seem to think that you can’t get accredited or recognized through one. Hogwash!

If you do enough research, you will definitely find an online college that is not only accredited, but one that employers are actually LOOKING for. I’m talking about extra programs the big five universities provide that are cheaper but still carry with them the prestige of saying ‘I am a Harvard graduate’ (something Bill Gates has yet to do!)

I can’t disclose which online college I decided to go with for privacy reasons, but suffice to say it matched my budgetary restraints (with some tossing and turning) but most importantly carries with it some weight.

I am going to be pursuing a bachelor’s in english, because as you can see I am very verbose and who knows, maybe I’ll write or edit, or even teach. I don’t particularly like kids though, so I don’t know if spending all this money on an online degree would be money well spent if I became a teacher. I’m not a particularly patient person either. I want to be, but I’m not.

Maybe having to answer to teachers a long ways away and waiting for answers via email (the restrictions of attending on online college) may provide the necessary education a lass such as myself needs to get on with her patience skills.

My parents never went to college and the truth is they basically think me working at Nike is a prestigious job. And maybe it is, to them. But not to me. I don’t want to attend to other people’s feet for the rest of my life which is precisely why I decided to research online colleges and really make a change in my life.

These sorts of decisions are hard when you are alone which is why most people cling to their families. But I’m not really that kind of a person - I tend to kind of flow my own way and that doesn’t go down easy with my parents. Now that I’m pursuing a degree of sorts in my spare time while I work, who knows, maybe I’ll meet more permanent and cultured people to become friends with.

I’ve always heard and thought that when you are studying, you make friends because of you kind of suffer together. But maybe it’s more this thing where with online colleges you’ll make a bunch of friends all over the world, so maybe you can plan trips together and crash at each others’ houses. That would be really cool.

I guess pipe dreams come with women like myself. I have a pipe dream of graduating from an online college and the diploma on my wall really meaning something special, something my parents would approve of. Something I would approve of, when I’m old and grey.

Happiness is kind of a strange and new thing, I think. You can’t quite place what exactly it does to a person, but when they have that degree, it somehow completes us in this way we can’t quite put in words. That’s why I decided to create this blog and also pursue finding online colleges that would satisfy my needs.

Anyways, take care, and I hope this has been an englightening post! lol