I would be less concerned with managing the workload of going back to school, but more concerned with objectively evaluating your reasons for pursuing another degree. Do you really need to get a degree to re-enter the workforce? Should you be investing time and money (even if it's not yours) to study something you are not that interested in.
With online programs you lose a big benefit of traditional programs - the network. I'm in an online Master's program right now and feel very removed from my classmates. While I have been able to leverage contacts from my BS to help advance my career, I don't see the same thing happening with this degree. An online program is all about the skills and knowledge learned in the coursework, so I suggest making sure you are excited to learn deeply from the coursework you are going to study.
Best of luck.
I don't know if I need a degree to reenter the workforce. That's 4+ years away. I don't know where we will be living, what husband's job situation will look like (he'll be employed, but he could be as little as a year from leaving the military, for who know what, or he could be 5+ year away).
I do know that my resume will be week. My skills will be 9 years old, so getting back in to my old field will be difficult.
I think having a degree is a good way to hedge my bets. It's also something to help me feel like I'm making professional progress during this time. I like working, miss it terribly, and finding out it will be another 4 years before I even have a chance to reenter he real workforce was a brutal blow. School is a way to mitigate some of that, and to make me slightly less depressed about the situation.
I know having another degree won't guarantee a job. But it really can't hurt. I've selected a degree that I think isn't overly specific (MLIS degrees are used for tons of jobs outside libraries). I've been fairly careful about what online program I chose, based on reputation and also on what net working opportunities are still available. Given that I'll be in Germany, briefly in the US, and in Japan for the time I'm doing this. Online is the only option.
It's not exactly that I'm not interested in the MLIS world. It's that I'm not sure I'm especially interested in pursuing it academically, I guess. I volunteer at a library. I'm involved enough that I'm basically a staff member. They have rules that specify, "volunteers are not allowed to do X, except Villanelle". I love helping a kid find materials for his research project. I spend a couple hours on a slow day yesterday helping a woman find resources to help her young daughter learn about responsibility. Then I helped with a programming activity I've been very involved in, and I did some research to make a plan for the bulletin board I'll do next month. I really like all that. But I don't know that I like sitting in a virtual classroom, talking theory. Maybe I will, but that's a different animal then doing the work.