I got the majority of my taxes done today. I’m still waiting for a few forms to be posted online on Jan 31, so I should be able to file fully in early February. It’s looking like a nice refund between my educational and medical deductions. I got my first car payment bill today and just took care of that online.

I’ve been thinking about my master’s degree (which I just can’t afford right now) and whether I want to finish up with the MLIS right now, or if I’d rather switch gears and do something that’s more closely related to my career so I can leverage that while I’m still fairly young and energetic enough to care deeply about it. I know I can do it later, too, but I almost feel like I’d rather do the career development education stuff now. It might help me to advance a little more quickly if the folks I work with and for know that I’m very serious about it. It’s one thing to read books, but if I take the time to get an additional degree, it’s a little more valid. While I think a lot of the things I’d learn would be things I know already from experience or would learn better from experience, that piece of paper does make a difference.

Thinking about school has made me wander into reverie and regret(and I realize this might be because I forgot to take my medication this morning - I’ll remedy that right now) about my undergraduate studies. I don’t regret them wholly, but I can’t help thinking that the last 10 years would’ve been very different (esp. the last 6) if I’d gone away to school and gone somewhere smaller.

What if I’d gone to Wellesley or Drew University or Boston College or even Harvard? (I didn’t get accepted to that last one, but what if?) What if I hadn’t had to pay for school? What if I’d been able to study abroad in the UK or Asia?

None of them were really options since finances were the big thing. I went to an expensive school that didn’t require me to live on campus and allowed me to live at home ($aving$) and work full-time to afford it. Sure, I still have $12K to pay off, but I’ve already paid off more than that. It could’ve been $70K if I’d gone somewhere else. But I might be making more money by now by having been on the right track from the start and might have been able to pay off $70K in 10 years.

I’m not going to take this further because regret is the most fruitless of all feelings. Looking at my income and expenses and deductions and everything has just triggered this sort of “checks and balances of life” moment. Whatevs.

Since I have this car payment coming up, I really can’t spend crazily, and since I felt crappy and wanted to shop, I had to find another way to treat that craving. I had about $6 of iTunes credits from a gift certificate, so I purchased some songs off of Thom Yorke’s “celebrity playlist.” They’re all quite good. The ones I chose are:

• “Horse and I” by Bat for Lashes
• “Silikon (featuring Sasha Perera)” by Modeselektor & Sasha Perera
• “No Hope Before Destruction” by The Dears
• “What It Look Like” by Spank Rock

Now I’ll go help with dinner or something nice, domestic and daughterly.