umm.... errr..... well how do I put this??????
Things have changed.
Last week I was pretty sick, bad case of bronchitis (which also prompted me to return to Qigong training this week), and all I could do was cough, think, read and occasionally post on MT. But the thinking and reading is what got me, I do not often get time to sit anywhere by myself and think for any length of time these days and a week of that was rather nice and a bit enlightening (although I could have done without the coughing).
OK to the point for starters that masters program I was accepted into I am withdrawing from, I do computer/network security stuff all day and I have no desire to study it anymore than I already have. Besides with my recent promotion and my added responsibilities I am going to be going to so much training over the next few months it is making my head spin.
I have decided what I really need to do is to contact the Beijing Language and Culture University this evening, or I should say my wife will be contacting them for me, and discuss their distance learning program in Chinese Language and Culture. It looks good from what i have read but not easy and should I survive I will at least know how to read and speak Mandarin. The full bachelors degree is between over 140 and 150 credits, but this would be a second bachelors for me, should I decide to go that far with it, but it appears I do not have to and I am not sure I really want to. To be honest when I started my illustrious college career, way back when, I was a Chinese studies major and until last week I felt I was to old and to far into my current career with to many responsibilities to return to it, no matter how much that little voice inside kept telling me to give it a try.
I realized somewhere in between coughing spasms that if I want to train CMA and research CMA history in China like I truly want to I need to understand the written and spoken language as well as the older (traditional) written language and this will give me what I need to do this. As well as the structure I need to keep me motivated and possibly a required yearly trip to Beijing, which I would be doing anyway, so that works for me as well.
So after all this yakking it comes down to I have decided to start following what that person inside of me has been telling me to do for years. I need to pursue the Chinese stuff now with more intensity and become fluent in Mandarin so I can do what I want to do.... and being able to talk to my in-laws wouldnt hurt either.
The career will handle itself without the MS degree but the rest will not unless I get off my butt and start pursuing it now and I am not getting any younger and I want to do this now, not later.
I do truly appriciate all of the previous congratulations on my MS degree but I have to be honest with myself and if I am I really don't want to pursue it any furhter, I'm not geting any younger and there is no time like the presant to pursue it.
OK I have said too much already and likely made many of you all sick of my yakking I will stop now