Time waster or future maker?

I’m in grad school finishing up my last term this summer en route to my master’s degree. I have essays coming due, a big term paper that I’ve yet to start (and have little interest in writing), and a mid-term to prep for next week. So, what have I done with my time today?

I read a blog. Not just any blog, but the blog of another indie author who has managed to turn indie sweat into legacy house dreams. (‘Legacy’ meaning the traditional publishing houses). It was and is and interesting, engaging and utterly absorbing read for someone at the start of their own indie publishing career. A sort of “how to” manual that speaks to the doubts, frustrations and tribulations that I’ll wager all writers endure, whether they cop to them or not. It begins prior to her even being an indie author and ends (haven’t gotten there yet) with the news I’ve seen of her getting signed by the big boys.

So as the day winds down and I look at the calendar on my desk chock full of to-do’s with not a one of them scratched out, I sit here with a sense of guilt at having not accomplished any tangible work. But should I have the guilt? Another way of looking at this is to say that I’m still studying, just in a different class. The class of publishing and of life; or, more specifically, the class covering the “how to guide of getting to where I want to be.”

I suppose the guilt comes from the grown up side of me that has worked, sweated and bled in the “real world” and considers this writing stuff to be for those wishy-washy artist types out there who would rather live out of their vans buying meals with the pocket change they garner from busking than having real jobs. The trick is to manage both until one or the other takes off, I guess. In my heart I know which I’d rather take off. In reality, I’ve paid a pretty penny for this degree, and it’d suck to piss it away with only a few months to go, so even if I have low hopes for using the degree in the “real world” I’d better get’er done.

‘Nuff said.