Thursday at 6 p.m. Time to vent, I guess. I am not so depressed about leaving my job. Actually, it is so much less stress not to worry about what time to wake up, constantly thinking, I'd better not be too tired to go to work and perform tonight. I think I'm still in denial a little, thinking that like this Saturday it's back to it. But it's not.

Tomorrow will be my first day at my TA job. It's a day of training. I am nervous. I don't really know what the heck I'm going to be doing. I don't even know what day and time my class the I'm teaching meets. I guess I will have to ask. I'm afraid of looking like this dumb, socially klutzy, incompetent person. In a way I think I will fit in, because, well, I like school. I like the dynamic that develops in a class. And I like writing and hopefully that will show, and maybe it will be fun and interesting and meaningful to help other kids learn to write better.

I've been around the past two days trying to meet with people before school starts: S. and K. and E. and my grandmother. Somehow I never got to have that heart-to-heart chat I really wanted to, the one where I confess my insecurities and try to figure out what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. Maybe I need to see a counselor. I don't know. My gosh I am still lonely. Like how can I just say, please help, I need to talk to someone about this. But maybe I don't, maybe I can just suck it up and trudge on and think about it later. Or write about it, I guess.

Maybe I could see myself doing research. Publishing papers or something, conducting studies, trying to discover new knowledge. Maybe. I could see myself traveling around the world or living abroad for a year, just to see what it's like. Writing a book or writing magazine articles, maybe. Working at the paper again? Maybe. Working in a bookstore. Being a bum. I don't know.

Sometimes I feel like my mind is turning to mush and I wonder if the day is going to come and my brain won't engage anymore, it will succumb to stupidity. Am I already succumbing to stupidity?

What will I do on weekends now? OMG. I secretly liked working weekends that way I would have an excuse for having no place to go on weekends. I have to go to work. See, no one can invite me anywhere, even if I were so inclined. Now I'm probably going to be sitting on my butt every weekend, watching everybody else do stuff. Yuck. I guess that was another thing I liked about my job. It was not typical. So many people just do the M-F, 8-5 thing and it is just so damn boring. Friday and Saturday are the only nights you can have fun, let's go out drinking and get drunk and sleep all day. OK. What a boring life. I liked living slightly off from what most people do. Stay up later than most people, do stuff during the day, have fun during the week. I guess it helped that I didn't have any friends.

I have spent way, way too much this month. $80 on books, $30 on pants, $25 on minutes for my phone. Tomorrow $2,000 for tuition, then like $100 or $200 for a parking permit, more on books, about $40 at Wal-Mart so far this month, $10 on a book, $20 on fast food. I was supposed to be trying to conserve money, instead I'm spending it like there's no tomorrow. Maybe to help cheer myself up a little.

It's strange, there are cycles where I feel on top of the world, like people actually care about me, other times I feel like no one cares at all. Ignored. Maybe I haven't been at a truly low point in a while, I still feel like there are a few who actually care what I do, but it goes up and down.

Sometimes I think to myself, I want to fall in love. Other times I think the very best thing I can do for myself is to stay above all that muck. Not climb the mountain only to fall into a deep, dark valley when it ends. I don't want my life to be prosaic. I don't want to be a cliche, you know the woman who wants a career but instead works part-time so she can take care of her kids until they're 18. Maybe there are other, better things to chase after than love--career success, spirituality, helping others. But is it normal to not want a relationship? Not really, I think it's pretty abnormal. Is it possible to be happy alone? I think it is. If it's your calling.

Monday. I just watched the saddest movie. The Son's Room, an Italian film. Sad, it gets the details right. Reminded me of my own family, in weird ways. Like how my dad used to play such sappy music on family road trips. And my dad is also a therapist, to boot. I've never really had someone close to me die, but the closest thing to it was when my parents got divorced, and it was just like that scene, the next day after the son dies, the mom collapses on the bed, crying, and that's just what I did. And missing someone is not the same as them dying, but I sometimes feel that way about my sister, how she is so far away, and something will remind me of her and it makes me wish she was here. So it was sad and it wasn't like one sad moment but it was like a documenting of a whole sad period of time.

Mom went on a day trip to Ruidoso so I stayed home. I bought tickets to the Diablos for tomorrow. I read Harry Potter. I helped my sister pick up her car from the repair shop and then we ate wings and fries for dinner. I think I'm getting fatter from eating so much junk lately. Then I watched the movie and now I'm watching Dateline.

I'm glad my sister is back. I think spending too much time alone can drive a person insane. My friend S. hasn't called me. Maybe I should call her. I will in a few weeks, I think, if she doesn't. She said she was going to Italy. I'm jealous.

Last night I wrote down my worst fears of how I'm such a loser and how I have run away from things once they started to get hard. How I'm not good enough, not smart enough, not clever enough, not tenacious enough. And it is true and it's not, and maybe it was cleansing to write all that down, just to have it out there. Honestly, maybe it was more of a case of being young and inexperienced and immature. And now I know better, I know better than to just go spinning in circles, to do something aimlessly.

Today I read on FL something about God and science and this article about I guess a scientific explanation of what it all means. I say I guess because I didn't really understand it and I dare anyone other than a quantum physicist to try to decipher that article. I probably could have spent more time trying to understand but I gave up a long time ago on trying to figure out stuff like that. It used to be such a burning question in my mind and now I am much more at peace about it. It's weird, my mind doesn't do science anymore, ever since I got out of grad school I have steered clear of that stuff. I used to read science books for fun now it just makes me feel inferior so I just don't bother with it anymore. But maybe one day I will get back to it.

Anyway, my thoughts on religion are that God exists. And I am a Christian but I still have a lot of questions and I don't just accept everything the church teaches at face value. I guess I just can't stand that some people try to do some intellectual exercises to prove that God doesn't exist and look at people who are religious with such derision, they say they are ignorant. But eventually you have to say, you know what you don't have all the answers, no one has all the answers, the smartest person who ever lived doesn't have the answers. If God does exist, would he only impart knowledge of himself to the smartest people, people who have Ph.D.s? No! I certainly hope not, I mean, I wouldn't want to be taking spiritual guidance from an arrogant egghead. The existence of God is something that even little children can understand.

You have to acknowledge the spiritual aspect of the world, the mysterious aspect, the unknown and unknowable, the why rather than the how. Sometimes I pray and it just seems right, when I am troubled, when I feel like a selfish jerk and wonder what is wrong with me. Somehow it helps and I don't know why. My life is better when I acknowledge the spiritual aspect, when I can surrender and quit being a selfish twit. There are rewards to putting effort into a spiritual life.

I guess I am not smart enough to figure out some proofs for or against the existence of God but I'm also not just someone who just accepts whatever they were born into and never questions it, just say, it's a matter of faith and never put it to the test. Whatever, I am guilty of not putting enough into it, not praying, not reading, not asking questions. I don't think it's wrong to question as long as it's in earnest, not just as an excuse not to believe. It's part of the process of spiritual growth, I think. As long as I'm not saying, I don't know what to believe, so I won't believe anything.

When I'm sad I start to eat too much. I should quit drinking soda, my tummy is getting fatter. Sucks to be lonely. I've had the TV on for hours and hours today just so I don't feel so alone.

OK, I finally did it. The end was less emotional than I thought it would be. I came to terms with it a few weeks back. I have thought about all possibilities at work. Well, most of them, and have decided against the most realistic ones. The fact that I applied for a job and didn't get it even though I was overqualified for it is a sign to me that it just wasn't meant to be. It's hard to know what is right but this feels right to me for now. But it is going to be hard facing that last day, it really, really is. This announcement came pretty easily, I just spotted a time when the office wasn't busy and my boss had some time. He couldn't have expected me to stay there forever, could he? Still I am sad thinking about not being around for football season, not being able to talk to these really cool, funny semi-celebrities whenever I go to work. There are things I won't miss, though, most notably working nights and driving home in fear a lot of nights. It is also a very isolated job and I am looking for something that is not quite so individual. I guess with this job I always feel like I'm on the razor's edge of survival. It's a high-pressure job in many ways, what with the constant deadlines and the need for a lot of attention to detail. No benefits, you don't get paid much, you work mostly undesirable hours, get home late. But I think that it's that edginess of the job that made it exciting to me. You're out there doing this on your own, you're racing against the deadline, you're out in Downtown when most everyone is at home safe and sound. The job makes me feel important in a lot of ways. And I am going to miss that feeling, of course. But I guess it's not quite as fresh as it was at the beginning, after awhile you are just tired, and you just want to be like ordinary people and go to work during the day and watch TV at night, is that so much to ask? There come days when you really don't want to be out, when it's freezing in the wintertime, when your family member is having a party, when it's Christmas Eve, when you have a test the next day, when the roads get flooded. And you still have to be there, there's no choice about it. In most other jobs you wouldn't have to work those days, they'd say stay home, it's Christmas Eve, we're closed, but you can't do that at the paper. Still, it has been an awesome ride. I mean, it's close to two years into it and I still get a kick out of my job, still like working with the stats. In a lot of ways it has been an ideal job for me. Unconventional and working in journalism, which I love, part-time, no commitment to a career path, really cool people to work with. Not trivial, either, I mean, it does carry a certain amount of responsibility with it, even if it's not the most important job at the paper. There is very little politics involved in it, no messing with meetings or arguing about job responsibilities, very clear cut, actually very little interaction with people, and even that interaction is very scripted. And all of these things match up pretty well with my personality.

But all things must come to an end and I gotta admit that I mastered the job a long time ago and I don't think I'd be happy doing a job that is now very easy and routine for me. Maybe I would feel sort of demeaned by it at this point, given that I have all this education and am working at this $8 an hour job, and I think if I didn't try something else I'd feel like I was wasting my talents at a place just because I was afraid to look for something different. If I would stay it would only be because I do feel comfortable at the job now, not because I was learning new skills or anything. I figure if I stay a year in teaching and hate it I could still conceivably weasel my way into another job at the paper or at some other publication. I might even be able to get my old job back :-).

But I would say I am very much at peace with my decision right now. I did what I needed to do, didn't needlessly postpone it. If it takes three weeks to find and train my replacement, then OK, it takes three weeks and I have over a month before my other job starts to just do whatever I want, go out every night if I want. Which would be cool. If it takes six weeks, that's cool, too, then I'd still have like three weeks off. If I am still working on August 19, then something must have gone terribly wrong, but it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. I think this is a good time to quit as far as timing is concerned. This is around the time I was hired two years ago and it worked out pretty well where I had a month to learn the job before the real excitement started. I guess I am ready to leave as soon as they feel comfortable with someone else in the job. I'm ready to say good-bye, sad as it might be. I've mastered the job and that's it, I don't care all that much about money, I'd be ready to leave tomorrow if they told me it was OK. That's a sad thought, I hope it isn't tomorrow.

Work didn't get out quite as early as I expected. 11 instead of 10. Spurs won, woo-hoo. Honestly sometimes I do my job so automatically that I probably could make some major mistakes and not realize it. Like leave out a box or make some glaring grammatical or spelling error. It's weird. And I was sort of tired today, I don't know why. Maybe b/c of the heavy exercise yesterday or because I ate a huge plate of tacos at lunch. Or something else but I just feel really tired and out of it right now.

Been thinking about the weeks to come, how hard it is going to be to do what I have to do. But life moves on, I suppose.

I miss my sis, she is house-sitting. I wish she was here. She's coming over tomorrow, so that's good.

Why am I so down, I don't know. I guess it's hard on a day like today where you're a little on the tired side to make yourself drive around town and sit through church. Then drive home, laze around for awhile, then get up again and drive to and from work.

I wish I didn't feel so lonely. Maybe I'm not really that lonely but right this second I am. And there are just things I can't talk about with most people. Anyone, really. Like I've been thinking about the past, wondering if it could have been different, wondering if I did the right things. And lately I've been thinking the answer to that is no. I didn't do the right things. I wish I could be one of those sincere people who really believe in what they do. And maybe I strive to be that but for so long I haven't been, I've been kind of a cynical, selfish jerk.

And sometimes I just feel like the biggest loser. Relationship-less my entire life, is something wrong with me? I care and I don't, alternately. Sometimes I think it would be cool to share my life with another person. Other times I think it's a horrible idea. A mess I don't want to get myself into.

I don't know what I want to do with my life. Write? I say that but sometimes I don't feel like writing anything at all. I worry about saying the wrong thing. I worry that people won't like me. I read this article on Slate and I thought it was snobby and condescending (a lot of Slate articles are like that, IMO), trying to be cute and funny but falling flat and I wonder if my writing is like that to other people. Grating. I guess you have to accept that, being a writer. Just that constant self-doubt, that insecurity of putting yourself on the line like that. And if it's really important. Or fun, even. It's so hard to get writing jobs and they pay so little, is it really worth it? I don't know. Maybe it should just stay a hobby.

So I miss my two sisters, neither currently living at home. I miss my co-worker who I never get to see anymore because we work opposite days. I miss my classmates in school. On the bright side, my mom is off for summer break. But that's not always good news. And we don't really share the same interests.

I worry about the world, the decay of morality and reason simultaneously. I think about the war in Iraq all the time and wonder if it will ever end.

This morning at church we had a giant prayer meeting and I really did feel something, like a wave of peace washing over me. Sometimes at home I will pray and will feel like that, very peaceful, like I'm pouring out my soul to God. It was so strange, though, as soon as we started praying I felt that way instantly. I wonder if there really are spirits out there.

Day 3 of feeling sick. Actually, I think I'm getting better. It got worse but now I think I'm getting better. I'm breathing more clearly.

I am currently bored out of my skull. I am looking forward to working nearly every day next week. At least I'll have something to do. There just is not enough to fill up my day. I miss my sister, too, since she is house-sitting. I sit on my butt and wonder, what the hell am I doing with my life? What kind of career do I want to have? Where do I want to go? Do I want to have a family somewhere along the line? I don't know. Is it stupid not to know, not to plan these things out far in advance? I don't know either.

Sometimes I dream about going back to Chicago. I don't know why, but I just liked it there. Such a cool place. I want to go back someday.

I think about getting old. I'm bored now. This is what retirement must be like. I have zero dollars saved for retirement right now. That is awful. I'm 25. I need to get a job. Ever since I turned 25 I feel old. I saw a tennis player on TV yesterday, the announcer said, she's 25, that's getting older for a tennis player. And to me, 25 means you no longer have that look of youth. You are a fully fleshed-out adult, you can't pretend you're 18 anymore. People wouldn't believe you anyway. You can tell, like I could tell with that tennis player.

Being sick really brings me down.

It bothers me that I can't say for certain what I'm doing in life, at least not with a completely straight face. Not without feeling like it's a big joke, yeah, getting another master's, wonder what I can do with this one? I always come back to this, why do I have so little faith in this world, so little faith in myself that I can make a difference? Why does everything so damn depressing to me, so damn futile that it's not worth doing?

Sometimes I compare myself to people I see on the news, people, say, in Iraq who live in violence every single day or who don't have enough food to eat and it is just crazy, here I am living in this place that is mostly peaceful, with lots of opportunities, and they have nothing. Why? I didn't earn my place here. Why was I fated to live here and not there? I drive myself crazy with the guilt, I think about it all the time and it is the reason I try not to complain ever about my station in life. In a way it's also why I try to live simply, not pile on possessions. I thank God for everything I have and maybe I need to work more on doing all I can with what I have. Maybe the sin is not in having all this, it's in not using it to help others in some way.

The people I respect most are those who live out their beliefs. Often I feel like I've never believed in anything strongly enough that I felt compelled to live it out. But that needs to change.

Thursday. Had to go to work tonight. Fairly slow night, despite the million sign-ups I had to enter. I'm tired for some reason, maybe because I did so little today. I watched The Dead Girl. That's a pretty intense movie. Good storytelling and good acting. But sometimes indie films just bother me because they are so weird. It's like they make it a point to show things that mainstream movies don't just because they can. It makes you feel uncomfortable watching it. I kind of have this idea, that mainstream movies make me feel like a weirdo and indie films make me feel like I'm totally normal.

I'm sad. It's like I lost my purpose for living now that I'm out of school. Isn't that sad? But true. I have so much time to think about things. I think about what a failure I am, how I'm not sure what I'm going to do. On Oprah, some actor named Hill asked these juvenile delinquents what their goals were. He said that a lot of times black kids don't see the value of education, how it can fit into their life plan. He said you should look at your life the way an architect looks at a building. And it seems evident enough, but then I look at my own messed-up life and I see that I haven't done that at all. I never really saw education as an investment in the future, as a tool to use to get something done that I really wanted. Maybe I've never really wanted anything badly enough to work at it. I'm very undisciplined, really. In a lot of ways I've thrown out all of my education, not valued it enough. For what? Comfort, for doing something that makes me feel good in the moment. I really don't know what I want to do with my life. I don't have enough goals.

I guess life just disappoints me. Is anyone really happy with their life? I don't understand people who just love life. There are just so many crappy parts of life that I don't get how you can really love your life. Even if you have the happiest moment, the next you can have the worst one. Loneliness is ever-present, monotony, wanderlust, crankiness. People are just evil. Well, a lot of times. And maybe some people can embrace all of that and say they love it all, but I don't. I wouldn't take my own life, but I wouldn't describe being human as an ideal state.

I did a test referenced on kottke.org for how to tell if you are a good liar. According to the test, I am a good liar because I always think about how other people consider me. That is true. I do think about that all the time and I wish that I didn't. I wish I could just be transparent about everything. Maybe I wouldn't be so inhibited then, maybe I would have an easier time making friends. But maybe more than that, I guess what that article was about was that people who don't think like that, who think more in terms of, is this good for me, how does it affect me, that just seems like a much, much healthier way to be. This is something I need to work on.

Lately every time I get down on myself I start praying. I pray for other people, or I thank God for the things I have. And it works. It takes my mind away from all the angst.

It's 12:30 on Thursday morning. It has been kind of a frustrating day. I was thinking I was going to work and I really wanted to work, in fact, since I'm so bored. Then my co-worker calls me, says he's going to work instead. Who decided this? I guess I just am a little peeved that I don't get any input into the decision, like he's calling the shots here and I feel like I'm losing some of my credibility at work. I mean, not like it matters so much given the job I have, but still, it just peeved me. I guess I'm just tired of being bored.

So instead I went to church and watched the Suns-Spurs game. Which was cool. I have missed going to church and the game was really, really good.

It's disorienting to be so bored. Sometimes I just feel like I get so used to being at home that I forget how to do things on my own. Driving starts to freak me out, I forget how to talk around other people. I stop thinking about the outside world, all I think about is stupid stuff like, what's for dinner and how can I get better at playing the piano? I start analyzing myself and my life and it is not a good thing.

Sometimes I just feel so useless. Sometimes I feel like I have thrown it all away in my life. I have a good enough education and I'm still in school. I'm not putting it to good use. I had the opportunity to get this job and somehow it slipped through my fingers. Why? I don't know. It's weird, like getting it would have been a validation for me. And not getting it is saying, well, you're not good enough.

I'm sad, I'm practically crying right now. I hate to see things change. I really do. I hate the fact that I am not going to be at my current job forever. I hate that I don't know what I want to do with my life. I hate that I have so few friends, so few people to talk to. I hate that I don't really have a career. And it's really hard to make myself change.

Is it difficult for everybody to find and keep jobs? My sis is having a hard time of it. And she's more of a career woman than I am. Sometimes I see my current job as just this bizarre accident, the job I wasn't supposed to have, that I shouldn't have taken but I did anyway. And in a way I love my job, but in a way I guess it wrecked some other things I had going on in my life at the time.

Sometimes I look back and think that I've spent years being angry and insecure and above all lonely. Like I haven't wanted to be a part of the world at all, I just wanted to say "screw you, world" and do my own thing. So I did, to an extent. But I guess I don't feel the same way now. I'm tired of being lonely. I'm tired of not having a stable career, not having a five-year plan. I'm tired of living at my mother's house and pretending it's independent living. It's weird, how do I explain to people that for the entire years of 2004 and 2005 I had no friends, I didn't make any connections in grad school, I didn't make any useful career progress? I just did nothing except turn into this insecure mess.

Maybe I look back at this now and think that maybe it has been a spiritual problem all along, not being centered, being insecure and using the wrong things to cope. For years I've been using food to cope. And then sometimes blogs in lieu of friends. Really. Some people have TV soaps, I had blogs. But I think I don't rely on those two things the way I used to, though I still overeat sometimes and I still like to read blogs.

And I guess I just realize that I shouldn't do that anymore, that I have to be more mature than all that, grow up. Try to make some real emotional connections, or even intellectual connections. Decide on a career and make a real effort to prepare for it. Quit being fat and overweight.

I just really want to get out of this funk. I want to be busy, busy enough to the point that I don't have time to contemplate my life and whatever failings have come in the past. Where I work hard and make my own living, where endless days off are a thing of the past, or something to look forward to rather than to dread. Right now I feel like I am trapped in the mode of a child. Like I want to be independent but it's just not happening. I'm still in school and it's costing me a pretty penny but hopefully I will graduate and be able to do something I really want to do and can deal with. My social life still leaves something to be desired but it's still better than it has been in the past where I was just a total mess and angry at the world and clueless about how to deal with anything.

Maybe I just need to be more disciplined about things. I guess I always think, well, there's no reason I can't get a real job. There's no reason for me to still be in school. There's no reason I can't be independent. Maybe getting another master's degree is impractical or a luxury more than anything else. But I guess looked at another way it's a good investment. I mean, I have the whole rest of my life to work. What other time would it have been possible to drop everything and take classes I've wanted to take for years, classes about writing and about literature? I see it as an investment in my life and my personal development. Also, given that I like the subject matter and am a reasonably good writer, when I finish I can turn that into a job teaching or doing some form of writing. Would it be so bad to have a job teaching people how to write? It seems like a cool thing. But then I get cold feet about turning my back on everything else and committing to this. What about my budding journalism career? What about cashing in on my experience and connections at the newspaper? And then there's my education in CS. I mean, I have that knowledge, it's extremely marketable, and I do still like working with technical things. I always feel like if I just put in a little time with that then I could have some really in-demand job skills and earn a really good living. I'm really going to just ditch all that and go with this instead? I guess I just have this fear of commitment, like I'm going to do it and it's all going to blow up in my face. I'm going to finish my master's and be, like, is this it? Is this what I'm going to end up doing for the rest of my life? What if I don't like it? But the truth is, if I don't then I could conceivably go back to one of those other things, if I am thoroughly convinced that I really want to do that thing. Maybe I should think of this as more of a process of elimination. If I decide I really don't like teaching, I'd rather do something else, then I will do that other thing and just go for it full throttle.

But right now I guess I feel like I have faltered, I have done the immature thing and done things just cuz I felt like doing them rather than thinking long-term. Something's not making me 100 percent happy, so I am going to try something else. While still doing the other thing. I guess what I really should have is the master plan. Like try to come up with an actual answer to what do you see yourself doing five years from now. Be serious about pursuing some type of career. I guess I have always had this attitude of being a dilettante, dabbling in jobs not really settling down into anything, not thinking, well, I'll do this as a stepping stone to something else. Doing things blindly, I guess. Also, figuring out more than a job, but what kind of lifestyle do I want to have? No free time, always at work? Or the relatively much slower pace of academia? It seems like the newspaper and the university are two opposite extremes. Maybe I should just admit to myself that I have gotten used to and that I now like long vacations and flexible schedules. That I'm more of a morning person than a night owl. On the other hand, why do I like the paper then? B/c it's fast-paced, b/c it affects a lot of people, b/c I like the people I work with. It's exciting, more exciting in my eyes than being "just another teacher." On the other hand (three hands?) I don't like corporate politics at all, I want to have reassurance that I'm going to have a job from one year to the next. And teaching is pretty rewarding. Corporate jobs revolve around making money and maybe that's not the way I like to think about things. In some ways corporate jobs can be more boring, since at least in teaching you have new students every year.

I've never really liked the idea of being locked into a profession, though. Like if you get a medical degree, then being a doctor pretty much all you can do. Or if you get a Ph.D., same deal. You're stuck trying to be a professor. So maybe it's better this way, like there's some flexibility. But then you're maybe not going to have as much influence.

I don't know, this is probably not ever going to be completely resolved. Maybe sometimes you have to go with your feelings, with what excites you, but sometimes you have to make decisions based on rationality. And I feel like I've done both. Getting a CS degree, the ultimate in rationality. Going to work at the paper, the ultimate in irrationality.

This has helped resolve my glumness a tiny bit. I don't feel like crying anymore. Still feeling sad, though, just because. Because things are changing again. How much does this have to do with my sister not being here anymore? And because my work situation is changing? And I'm bored and feeling useless and re-evaluating my life decisions? But it's all going to be OK, right?