You Can't Always Go Back

So I'm back in graduate school where I got my undergrad degree and worked two years on a Master's degree. I've been trying to decide whether to get an apartment here in Commerce, or stay in Dallas. There are benefits and drawbacks to both choices. If I stay in Dallas, I will have to find a second job to make enough money to live on, but I get to stay close to all my friends and the great life I've built over the last 14 years. If I move to Commerce I can probably make ends meet on what I make at the university and any other writing gigs I get (KERA, etc) but I will be living in Commerce, and all my friends will be in Dallas.

I was driving around Commerce the other day and noticed the old apartment is for rent. It's even more dumpy now than when I lived there 14 years ago. And the rent is a little higher too. I was paying $250 a month then, now the rent is $350. Although it was tempting (and a little surreal too) to move back into my old life, I realized that there has to be a limit to going back into the past. That I can make the present a hybrid of past and make it what it is today.

Plus quite frankly I don't want to live in a dump anymore!

Too Long

Yeah, it's been too long since I've posted, but maybe I can make up for that. SOOOO much has happened in the last month. I decided to go back to graduate school and get my PhD, which was the original plan in the mid 90's when I moved to Dallas from Commerce where I was working on my Master's degree. I left Commerce in 96 with my 19 year old hostage because things had just become too strange there...I was drinking and doing coke, and it was starting to get in the way of school. Now when I look back on it, I realize that school was just another thing I gave up for one more drink, but it took me 14 years to realize that. After getting my MA at SMU in 2005, I still wasn't ready to pull the trigger on a PhD program. Only after being laid off from the SBA in January and not being really happy (or that successful) at recruiting, I decided maybe now was the time. My Mom, in her infinite wisdom said, "Well you're not getting any younger if you're going to do it you should do it now" Thanks Mom! So I'm back at Texas A&M Commerce, teaching two sections of Research and Argument and feeling both at home and out of my comfort zone if that is at all possible...