divine angst

I received an email today that my school sent all my financial aid paperwork to me last week. I’ve been checking the mail regularly, but haven’t seen it yet. Maybe it will come today. I have until the end of the month to review the stuff, accept my loans, and send all the paperwork back.

I have until the end of the month to be this debt free. (Not that I’m completely debt free, but without the house or the nice car, well, the debt is lower than it was.) And I know that I won’t actually BE in debt until August, when the money is disbursed. But this is a mental thing, more than anything.

I have just a few more days to be able to think of myself as relatively unfettered. I’m not considering this option, but, theoretically, I could say, “No. I won’t go to law school this fall.” I could just find myself a job in Our New City and support Mr. Angst while he gets his degree. I could focus more on starting our family. Of course, that means I could continue being just what I am today—an underpaid, overqualified professional getting through the daily grind. There’s some romance in that vision, actually, but I prefer my romance on the big screen. So that’s not the choice I’m going to make.

Instead, I’ll be filling out this paperwork and investing in my future. That’s what we do. Any time we take a risk, we invest in the future. As gambles go, this law school thing is pretty solid. I’ll be in a lot of debt, but chances are I’ll be able to pay it off.

So, off to research those interest rates! Off to compare incentives and repayment schedules! Off to delve into the paper torture.

With all the Apple-Intel noise, including the expected predictions of doom for Apple’s sales, I am feeling a slight twinge of buyer’s remorse over my Powerbook purchase.

A corner of my brain says, Hey! You could have just sprung for a proc upgrade and new battery for the Pismo and waited till the new Powerbooks come out next year! And there’s logic in that.

(I say PBs next year because I am certain one of the biggest reasons Apple did this move was to get actual mobile procs that run cool AND fast, since the G5 Powerbook was quickly looking more and more mythical.)

Sigh. And of course the voice inside is being silly—I have been craving a new machine for ages and my five-and-a-half-year-old Pismo is NOT getting any faster. But leave it to Apple to announce that there will be a great upgrade to the machine I was looking at—only not for another year.

So, a little twinge of buyer’s remorse. As soon as that box arrives, though, I think the twinge will evaporate. I have never had a new computer. My Pismo was purchased on eBay. Every work computer I’ve had was passed on from someone else. I’ve always had to contend with the little twitches and bumps signifying that someone else’s hands touched my machine first. But not this time. This time, the machine is MINE. ALL mine.