I don’t dream much, but for the past two nights I dreamt, and the dreams were on the same subject. Two nights ago, one of my professors sat with his arm around me and encouraged me to continue pursuing religious studies. we worked out a plan of action where I could study Buddhism academically and personally until I was able to attend graduate school.

Last night I had a dream with a similar theme. I woke up at 3:30 and watched as my memory of the details of the dream slipped away, leaving me only with the feeling that my subconscious continues to scheme and plan ways for me to study religion in graduate school.

This is in stark contrast to my waking life. With all of the results in, it looks like my career as an academic is once again relegated to the distant future (this is what I feel on a good day). I have decided to really focus on programming and to relegate my study of religion to hobby status (I will never be able to suppress this entirely). For the past week or two, I have exposed myself to a whole new set of technologies: I’ve lost sleep as I’ve explored the inner workings of Mac OS X Panther, installed the Apache web server, configured MySQL, begun programming in PHP and Perl. My days are filled with all of this new learning.

I should back up and give you all the final graduate school tally: Stanford accepted me into the Master’s program, but I would have to foot the almost $80,000 tuition bill for two years with no guarantees of further advancement. A pretty risky proposition for a man with a family to feed. Iowa accepted me with limited funding but didn’t accept Jana. UCI’s history department accepted Jana, and her professors worked hard to make sure she stayed here. Add to this all of the benefits of remaining in our current situation: (relatively) cheap rent, a top-notch school for our kids, a wonderful network of friends, and the fact that I am already employed, and it’s kind of a no-brainer. The situation might be different if both Jana and I were accepted at Iowa–then we could both pursue our dreams…

It’s interesting to see who’s been supportive of us and who hasn’t. I am grateful to Jana and my friends and mentors–they have been so encouraging, and are as surprised and almost as disappointed as I am. But it amazes Jana and I that it is family that seems to be the most ambivalent, or even oppositional (though my Dad wrote me a wonderfully empathetic email message–I consider this quite a gift, since I can count on my fingers all of the letters I’ve received from him throughout my life). I hope that we will be more careful and nurturing with the dreams of our children, of our friends, and of those around us.

Anyhow, I’m tired of being torn. I have never seen my career as just a means of getting a paycheck. While there is nothing wrong with being a gainfully employed and productive member of society, I’ve always felt that I can do so much more, give so much more with my time. I want my waking hours to be filled less with the distraction of making a living and to be spent pursuing my passions and making the deepest, most positive, most lasting contributions to the world. And I feel that I’m talented enough to be combine earning a living and fulfilling my dreams into one occupation.

This is what is spilling out from my subconscious, when I let sleep take over, or when I let my fingers fly across the keyboard of their own accord. On the surface, I try not to whine. I have decided to focus on being a good little web designer and database programmer, at least for the near future. Some people drown their sorrows in front of the bartender with their fingers around a cool glass–I get numb in front of a glowing screen, with my fingers on the hot aluminum keys of my PowerBook.