A road less travelled.

This is going to be a personal note, rather than an update of PoP4.0's progress.

Recently I graduated with my Masters degree (3 days ago) and I have been having an existential crisis.  Finding jobs right now is tricky, especially in my field of teaching art and guidance counseling.  I am left with a few options they are A) stick out the slump and keep looking for that job B) Go back to school for Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Alternative Energy and finally C) Go into business for myself.

A) After crunching the numbers of time spent in the education field vs the repayment, we find that most teachers are slowly bleeding for most of their career.  At age 50 or so the mortgage and school loans are paid but they are too old to enjoy their finally respectable income.  Chance are good, that upon retirement I would be making around 70,000 USD yearly.  I will have spent the first half of my life in education, and the second half in education trying to pay off the first round of torture.  As a colleague said today, "it is all about the kids."

B) I should have gotten a degree that is useful.  I know how to run equipment but I don't have a degree that says it for me.  Another degree will cost me about 20,000 USD and 3-4 years of my life.  Chances are good I would wake up tomorrow and be 30 with two B.A.s and an MST and 70,000 usd in debt.  Not very appealing really.  EDIT:  I could go for game design but I have been told a portfolio is more important than a degree... and portfolios do not pay the bills (something I have tons of).

C) This is the option I had in mind, but again, a very scary proposition.  I have a burning desire to start manufacturing custom made computer cases.  Like these:

However, the market is really niche and not many people could afford the computer case that I made.  However, I imagine I could to the case with custom build and parts as a package deal.  Probably be looking at those who could pay for a commission and parts around 1500 - 3000 usd.

I suppose this is the best time in my life to have an existential crisis, I am a counselor after all.  Just remember everyone, I work for food, and will relocate ;).  I promise the next update will be about PoP4 after I get Windows 7 back on my computer.