Cesar Chavez, what a great guy - Tomorrow is Cesar Chavez day and I am lucky enough to get it off. I am so looking forward to sleeping late and watching more tube. I really *should* go to the bank and work on some homework, and I probably will. I need to check off some things that have been on my to-do list for awhile.
I've been absorbing a lot of music and movies today and it was really fun. This is a cool band- they're coming to NMSU this week and I wish I could go. I saw a few movies, too- In the Company of Men, which was really, really disturbing, especially to someone who may be entering the work force in the next nine months. I can't believe Aaron Eckhardt is the same actor who played the neighbor guy in Erin Brockovich.
I also saw Tuck Everlasting, which was a nice innocent movie to balance out the other one. It was a little too Disney-fied for me, but it was a cute story.
I wish I could have seen Bowling for Columbine, but the university movie theater sold out of tickets on Saturday night :-(. Michael Moore is a cool guy- I used to watch TV Nation, his short-lived TV show. I guess I'll have to wait until it comes out on video.

I actually *did* get an infinite loop right after I posted last time! I'm lucky today! Anyway, I finally got it working and turned it in- before it would be counted another 10 percent late. I am not really happy about turning it in late, but now that it's done it feels good to be free to think about something else besides school work. I honestly hope that once I get a real job it is not going to be one of those high-pressure jobs where you're always stressed out and you have a million things to do and have to make lists and and deal with annoying people and have meetings and appointments all day and never get a vacation. But I have a feeling it will be like that, and there won't be as much allowances for mistakes as they allow us to get away with at school. I'm going to stumble around just like I did when I started college, just like I have at every job I've ever started.
I saw As Good As It Gets the other day, and I laughed out loud when Jack Nicholson went to the psychiatrist's office and told all the people in the waiting room, "What if this is as good as it gets?" What if it is? That's what I feel like right now.

Abnormal Termination - Null Pointer Exception. What's wrong with my program? It's not working. It was due yesterday. Work, damn program, work. Computer hell. Actually, I think the technical definition of computer hell is an infinite loop and, fortunately, I'm not getting one of those. AHHHHH! Stupid computer, stupid Java, stupid assignment, stupid me.

I'm SOOO busy.... But that's a good thing. At least I have something to do, a reason to get out of bed tomorrow. I got up at 6 AM this morning having gone to bed at 1 AM. The presentation was at 10 AM. I stood in front of the guidance team and spouted off all this crap, and they asked questions I didn't know the answers to and I didn't want to try to make up more crap to try to cover it up so I just stood there, looking like an idiot in my too-tight shoes, and said nothing. It's like I thought I knew something about this but now I'm reminded that I don't have a clue. *SIGH*
I didn't finish my other assignment, either. I've been dragging my feet on this one for three weeks. *LOUDER SIGH*

I love TCM! The other night I was up at 11 pm and I started watching this old Cary Grant movie, and today I saw As Good As It Gets - uncut with no commercials. Now I'm going to watch Ordinary People. Movies are cool.

Out of therapy and better than ever. I'm not depressed, I'm not insane, and yes, I can change.

I'm sick of SQL. I spent two hours on the stupid database lab and it still didn't work. I am still tired and it is starting to show. I'm all grumpy and all I can think about is how much I want to be sleeping. I used to think that it made you tough to go without sleep. Now I think that it just makes you tired. I was walking and I thought I saw something coming out of the bushes, but it was just a shadow. Sleep, I need sleep!

I stayed up until 2 am to get my report done. I am sleepy..........I feel strange.
Today in career orientation class, the professor asked who in the class worked 60 hours a week with school and work, and I was amazed that so many people raised their hands.

I have used up my entire week of spring break. I complained all week about "how much work I have to do" during break, but I didn't do very much of it. I have a report due tomorrow that I have barely started and a test to take that I haven't studied for. I have a bunch of work for the group project due, too. I am turning apathetic. I put it off because I know I can get away with it, even if it is not good for my GPA. I had better get motivated somehow, though, or it is going to be a rough time to the end of school.

Another Saturday gone by. I went to the bookstore this morning. I browsed the self-improvement section and the diet/exercise books and I felt like a total dork. When I was a kid I never understood why my parents bought those things. Now look at me. Ugh.
When I got home I lied to my mom and said I had gone to the library and I had a lot of work to do. I was supposed to go see my grandma for her birthday, but I just didn't feel like it. A poor excuse, I guess, but I wanted to be alone for a while and not have my mom pestering me about feeling all sad and depressed. Ok, so there I am alone at my apartment and I started to feel sick to my stomach. I vomited a bunch of times and had diarrhea. Blech, so I felt sick and I was alone and depressed, too. I'm OK now, though, so that is a very good thing.
I ended up calling my mom anyway about an hour ago and I told her about all this, how I got sick and how I don't really know what I'm going to do. I'm glad she was home because I felt better after I talked to her.

My pathetic existence, thank God for chocolate chip cookies. I am so disappointed in myself. I used to care about things, but now I don't, and I wish I could say that I am going to change, but I'm not. I am sad and afraid because I know that this is a hard and unfair world and that there will always be problems to face. I will fail and someone will not like me. I am a coward. I try to do good and to not beat myself up. I try not to offend anyone. I am just so tired of not being understood. I wish someone would be able to understand me. I try not to say things that I will regret later. You see, sometimes I say stupid things. Sometimes I feel like I am smart and everyone around me is a moron. Sometimes I feel that everyone around me is smart and I am the moron. Sometimes I feel like an innocent kid that knows nothing about the ways of the world. Other times I feel evil and very worldly. Some days I feel poor and all I have to eat is a bag of popcorn. Other days I eat at a restaurant and order the $15 salmon. I spent nearly as much at the grocery store today for an entire weeks' worth of groceries! I can't make up my mind what I want to do, where I am now, how I'm going to do it, anything. I can't make up my mind about anything! Sometimes I want to die. Not literally, more in the sense that I want to stay in bed all day reading the paper every day and collecting welfare checks. It could very well happen- it happened to my cousin. I'm just tired of pretending that I know anything when I don't, or knowing too much, or not getting anything done, or not doing what I really want to be doing, and having this stupid existential "crisis" when anyone could see that I'm not having a crisis and I should stop being such a crybaby when I don't have anything to complain about. But isn't that exactly when people commit suicide? Everyone thinks things are OK when that person is really tormented and depressed. I don't know whom to trust. God alone, I suppose, but God doesn't usually respond to my prayers. My parents, too, with their own neediness and personality defects and misunderstandings of how I feel. I don't dare say what I really feel, well most of the time anyway. I'm always depressed. I've just gotten used to being that way and not indulging those feelings most of the time. Life is depressing, and you just have to do whatever it takes to make yourself feel OK. I'm depressed, you're depressed, we're all depressed, but that's OK, you're not *supposed* to be happy anyway. So I'm not. I'm not happy, I'm not sad, I'm just doing and doing and not thinking about "the meaning of it all" or how pointless it all is, and why I am who I am and why I have stuff and others don't, just forget it because it doesn't matter.

It's Friday and I still haven't gotten much work done. I got up at 7 AM and fell back asleep at 9. Then I slept for 3 and a half hours. I don't know what's wrong with me- I guess my sleeping pattern is all messed up, plus I've been drinking too much caffeine and eating too much crap. After that I made pasta with tomato sauce, then did an hour of work on my architecture assignment. Finally some work is getting done! Not that I finished but it was something. I went grocery shopping and after I got back I started watching Urban Myths on MTV.
So there you have it, my slothful existence. Oh come on, I don't really feel like that. I don't get to do that all the time. I heard this saying which is something like, "To whom much is given, much is expected." I try to remember that when I'm feeling lazy. It's all too easy to just sit around and absorb things, to live to consume, but that turns out to be foolishness. I want to look back at my life and say that I have actually *accomplished* something. What a novel idea! So I don't want to sit around drinking beer all day, but I don't really have a master plan, and I wish I did. Any ideas? It's not as if I don't think about this all the time. In fact, I probably think about it too much at the expense of actually doing it. What's the thing that I'm good at, the thing where I could make the most difference, something that I could live with? What matters?

I am back at my apartment tonight. I watched the rest of the movie "The Fast Runner." It was really different from what I expected it to be. It was nearly three hours long and it was shot on video, not film, so it looked kind of like a home movie. I admit I had low expectations for it, but the story was really engrossing, unlike a lot of critically acclaimed independent films. It's different from what I usually see, but I'm glad I gave it a chance.
So I came back here before I got too caught up in being back at Mom's house. I am sure I would be only too comfortable moving back. I love her big screen TV, and I love having the dog around to play with. Plus the food is so much better at home- I made myself a peanut butter and jelly bagel this morning. I would never have that here since I banned all peanut butter from my refrigerator. Rent is free! I don't have to cook! I don't have to buy groceries! I could stay here forever! But inevitably there comes a moment of uneasiness, usually as I am sitting at my mom's flat-screen computer monitor with my soda and bagel, downloading pirated music off the Internet. This stuff is not mine. I feel guilty because I'm a 20-year-old loser. And I should be doing something, something important, damn it. So whenever that music finishes downloading I'm off in my '91 Honda Accord, back to my creaky old computer and 14-inch TV set, back to my nearly empty fridge. And it's all good because in my kingdom I own every last bit of my slacker existence.

The 48-hour ultimatum deadline has passed. War is imminent. I hope and pray that it will be short, effective, and that no blood of innocents will be shed.
I don't know what to think. On one hand, if there are these horrible weapons out there in the hands of evil men, it is our responsibility to destroy them. On the other, since when is it any one country's responsibility to go into another country and interfere without the support of the UN? On a more basic level, is war ever really a good idea? I hate violence and killing. But how many more would be harmed by chemical and biological weapons?

I am spending a couple days at my mom's house and I am absolutely enjoying it. I slept until 9:30 AM today and then we went shopping, then out to lunch. Mom is going all out since my sister is here, renting movies, cooking, hanging out at home.

Right now I am rediscovering the joys of Fleetwood Mac. I don't know what it is with me and 70s music. I recently bought Carole King's Tapestry album. I love the Eagles. It's kind of a guilty pleasure that I don't readily admit. As long as I don't think about the lyrics too much or how over-produced the music is, I really, really enjoy it.

Here's hoping that Blogger will actually work tonight. I spent most of the morning in bed, then I cleaned the apartment- my closet, my clothes drawers, the kitchen, the bathroom, swept, mopped, took out the trash. I think I'll wait until tomorrow to vacuum. I also made myself a decent pasta salad.
I really like the feeling of not going to school. I don't have to plan my whole day around classes and studying, I don't have to see people, I don't have an avalanche of work bearing down on me. But I guess I don't feel like I can enjoy it completely since I feel like the monster is waiting for me when I go back out.
I thought about going somewhere today, like maybe to buy a CD or a book, then decided against it. This is really a monetary problem- I have already spent way too much money, not all of it on frivolous stuff. Define frivolous- is it frivolous to go to the doctor when my foot hurt, or to go to therapy once a week? How about buying a new black ink cartridge for my printer? Four new pairs of jeans at $10 each because I got too fat for the old ones? I guess I could have done without all those things but I would have felt really deprived doing that. I feel more guilt over buying fast food and/or junk food. I've even charged fast food on my credit card, which is pretty desperate. Anyway, I'm starting to come back to my senses. I will absorb the cost even if it turns out to be a lot. *Sigh* :-(. I would feel a lot more secure about money if I had a job, but I just don't think that is a possibility right now. Right now I'm relying on savings and handouts from my parents.
I browsed through some CDs I wanted to buy on Amazon.com today but of course I didn't buy them. Once I buy a CD I don't ever listen to it the way I imagined I would when I bought it. When I buy a CD I'm usually like, *this* is the one CD I *must* own, I'm going to listen to it every day and memorize every word, etc., etc. But even if the CD is a true masterpiece, it's not as if it really ends up changing my life or something. I have never spent time memorizing lyrics or trying to pick out chord patterns. I listen to a CD only when I'm sad or bored.
Blah,blah, you can see how bored I am. I need to find something new and different to get me out of this routine. I spend too much time in front of this darn computer, too much time at school, too much time holed up in my apartment, too much time in front of the TV set. I feel like my life is a spectator sport. Watching people do stuff on TV. Reading about other people doing stuff. Listening to the professor lecture. Sometimes I feel that all I ever do is react to other people.

audblog audio post

Friday night. How bored am I? I finished all the books I was reading, the ones I actually wanted to read, anyway. Nothing good is on TV. I went out to dinner with Dad and Nancy, but decided to skip watching a movie with them.

Restless days. It's Friday, no classes today, but I was planning to go to the computer lab. It was closed. Instead I buy a personal pizza from Pizza Hut in the Union and a 20 oz. Dr. Pepper and read the school newspaper. For an hour. I was going to go pick up my sister at the airport today. Turns out she is not coming in until tomorrow. So I have nothing but time on my hands, time to read endlessly self-conscious novels, time to watch Legends: Jimi Hendrix on VH1, time to write here about my mundane life. Some days I count my blessings and think that this is the best that my life is ever going to get. I'm young, I have tons of free time (yes, tons), no responsibilities like a job or a kid or a husband, I have money, I have a car, I have my own place. I have everything. The bad news: It's all downhill from here. A year from now I will be struggling to get a job, or becoming disillusioned with my entry-level computer job, or in grad school struggling through my classes. Money will be scarce, my car will be a year older and creakier, and I will find myself doing it all alone. There are lessons I still have to learn. No, no, no........Yes, yes, yes.
I have become a different person and I have moved to a different place over the past year or so. Self-discovery, as cheesy as that sounds. Or I have stayed the same person, just a truer one, a more genuine one. Or not. Maybe I will look back at this and think that this is not the case at all. Everything is alright, or even if it's not, it will be in the end. My success is not guaranteed by my hard work. Destiny, if you will. I let it go because I know that even if I push myself harder than I ever have in my life and get that close to the goal, I might fail anyway. I let it go because strange things happen, flash floods and traffic accidents, and people disappoint and don't do what you expect.

I wrote an e-mail this morning. I hate how I write e-mails. I don't write them very often, and when I do it's usually because I have to. I check it over 3 or 4 times to make sure I haven't misspelled something, for content, because you know, if I said something stupid it would haunt me forever, check that I typed in the e-mail address correctly, made sure that the subject line is neither too vague nor too descriptive. After I've done all that I add an attachment. I try to remember if I saved the last changes I made to the file. Unfortunately this was after I had added it, so then after two minutes I finally decided it doesn't matter if I didn't save them, even though I had just spent thirty minutes revising every little word in that document. Finally, I work up the courage to send it. Send. Then the really scary part *nothing happens* the window disappears and my words have been put out into the world.

Today, oh, today. At noon today, I went downstairs to take out the trash. There were all these janitors, sweeping down there, talking in Spanish and laughing. I'm such an idiot, I go down there with my pile of garbage and just dump it in the trash can right where they're standing, and they all look at me, and this woman starts clapping and making some sarcastic comment. My face burned with embarrassment. I couldn't believe I had done it. I didn't look at them, just walked directly past them and back upstairs. God, how could I have done this? Have I no common sense?
I've never worked as a janitor, but I swept and mopped the floors plenty of times when I worked at Sonic, and I've had customers give me their trash so I could throw it away. There definitely is something degrading about that, and I bet that these people resent being treated like second-class citizens by these kids who could be their sons or daughters. I've seen the mountains of garbage that accumulate, the empty beer cartons, the cigarette butts all over the sidewalk. I don't really blame them if they're resentful of the students who live here. I guess it just feels awful to be humiliated like that. It reminds me that other people live on this planet, too, and not all of them are exactly like me. Well, duh. Maybe next time I'll make sure I'm alone when I'm taking out my trash.

At long last I am getting kind of tired of having this weblog. When I first started blogging I thought it was the greatest thing ever. I loved writing here, and I loved reading other people's blogs. I found a couple of blogs that I really liked, and some have been discontinued, and I've found blogs through blogs, and blogs from far away places like France, Malaysia, New Zealand, blogs about writing, tech blogs, college blogs, high school blogs. I've had some comments (when I used to have comments!) and a few nice e-mails, though I still suspect this blog goes largely unread. But the novelty is starting to fade :( . I mean, it's one thing to be self-absorbed, entirely another to be selfish enough to think that the whole world should know. It's strange to think that this doesn't just go off into space, that people have actually read what I've written, and in a way that's cool, but it's also scary. I feel like I can't write here what I would in a regular old tell-all journal because, well, what if someone finds out it is me? What if I write that I like someone and they, by some weird accident, stumble onto this blog and find out? Or I write something about my family and my mom reads about it? I don't do it consciously most of the time, but I do kind of clean up my writing if I think it gives too many personal details. It's pretty easy to figure out my identity. Yes, I have used my real name and e-mail address, so all you would-be stalkers, you know where I am. So anyway, there are my thoughts on blogging. What's next for me, I don't know. I feel like now I have to find the next cool thing that I can absorb myself in. Audio blogger, maybe?

Things I have done this weekend that I normally don't:
Stay up until 3 AM
Go to the movies
Go to the doctor
Hang out with my dad
E-mail a person I don't know
Grocery shopping on a Saturday night
Visit my grandma
Eat at Luby's
Eat at Del Taco
Things I wanted to do but didn't:
Get a haircut
Go to youth group (?)
Buy a black ink cartridge for my printer
Read the newspaper
Take a long Sunday afternoon nap
Rent some very touching, life-altering movies
Buy a CD

I got weighed when I went to the doctor's office on Friday. 170 lbs. Kind of bad, but I was expecting much worse. Time before that it was 159 lbs. So 11 lbs. of fat heaped on my body, actually less if you adjust for the weight of my shoes. This is the kind of fat you recover from, not the 300-lb. body that if you lost 100 lbs you would still weigh in at a husky 200 lbs. I guess I'm blessed with a high metabolism. Even though I ate a bunch as a kid I wasn't fat, and even though I have been on basically a continuous eating binge for almost a year I have gained 90 lbs., not 200. Not that I'm proud, only relieved that it's not more.
I look down and my belly is a half moon, a doughy mass, a middle-aged man's beer gut. It is a flabby spare tire. It is my pain that became flesh, it is the ugly side-effect of my constant self-medication. No, it's not an addiction. Yes, it is. Instead of coming home drunk at 4 am I buy myself a box of cookies and a pint of Ben and Jerry's. I don't cry anymore now that I've found my friend food. You, dear friends, loaves of bread, boxes of cereal, Whitman's samplers.
It is a constant reminder that I'm not attractive, never have been, and now it is almost guaranteed that I never will be. Well, who needs men anyway, since they're all jerks.
Eventually, when I've run out of things in the apartment to eat, I realize that there's not enough food in the world to cure what I have. Not even chocolate. When my stomach is filled to bursting with food, and I've eaten more than my mind and body can possibly bear, I don't feel better about myself. Amount of food is not directly proportional to amount of well-being. It's a curve, and once the optimum point is surpassed, it all goes downhill fast. OK, OK, I'll stop. Yes, Monday morning, OK, I'm not going to have any junk food, I'm better than that, I will just walk right past that vending machine because I'm turning over a whole new leaf. I exercise for an hour a day, the optimum amount as determined by health and fitness experts. It works until I get tired of being a holier-than-thou dieter, until I decide that the feeling of eating a candy bar, no, more precisely, that feeling of freedom that comes with knowing that I can eat as many candy bars as I want, is more thrilling than that feeling of self-importance that comes from starving myself. I'm only human, you know, and that feeling of eating without restraint is downright intoxicating. I've done this time and time again over the past year. You can feel sorry for me, or not, I don't really care. As far as addictions go, it's not too bad. It doesn't really hurt anyone besides myself, I can do it alone, and it's fairly cheap. Side effects are few, maybe a few pounds and high cholesterol, but otherwise it's safe and fast and effective.

Ok, so I'm back home in my apartment on a Saturday night. My foot doesn't hurt as much anymore- I'm taking Celebrex. Plus I'm trying to rest it.
I am not feeling too good. I don't know what's wrong- I'm stressed about school. I always feel like I could do more to be better. I don't feel really accepted by my classmates. Not that I try very hard to be, anyway, but I still wish that I had someone to pal around with. Then there's my family. I went out last night with my dad and Nancy. That was OK, but I think I need to get a life. I depend on my parents too much. My parents aren't the kind that will tell me that to my face, but just the same I need to "leave the nest", so to speak, and find my own way in the world.
I am just doing stuff to make myself feel better. I bought some Subway and then to the grocery store to buy some stuff, including chocolates and marshallow Peeps. I was going to rent some movies, too, but I couldn't because my phone number is unlisted. Darn. I have been spending entirely too much money lately considering that no money is coming in. I've been going to the doctor and to a therapist, I spent $50 on pants, plus I buy a lot of fast food, plus some groceries, plus other stuff. And rent, of course.
I guess that's part of the reason that I like to spend time with my parents- they pay for me. My dad took me to a really nice restaurant on Friday and he paid for me, of course, and my mom took me to the movies and paid for my ticket. I guess it just takes me one step closer to the reality that my savings are not going to last forever, and, much as it pains me to say it, I'm going to need to get a real job. Like I mentioned before, I am about halfway through reading What Should I Do With My Life? I thought it would be kind of interesting, but some of those stories are so self-indulgent. They make me feel spoiled and ungrateful. It's like those people really do have the resources to do anything in the whole world, to truly be masters of their own destiny. They're like, oh, what should I do today, get my MBA, or go to law or med school? Not like the people I know who are saying should I get a job at Wal-Mart or K-mart or Sonic, more like, oh, I have this six-figure comfortable job, should I leave that job to take another equally prestigious job? Should I go to Harvard or Stanford? Most people here are like, should I go to UTEP or community? I don't have much patience for people who complain, except for complaints written in online journals (ha ha). At the same time, I feel guilty because I can relate to the angst these people feel. I went through the whole, what college should I go to, what major should I choose, anorexic thing that a lot of middle-class white girls go through. I stay up all night thinking about what I'm going to do with my life, or how am I going to change the world, how I am going to help poor people. I read Sarah Hatter and relate to it. I have dreams of being a writer and hanging out in coffee houses, and being an environmental crusader and a novelist who speaks to her generation. I read Dave Eggers and Po Bronson and hang out at Barnes and Noble's with a caramel frappuccino. I went to Franklin High School and was in the same classes with all the preps who left this "sorry town" for UT-Austin and joined fraternities and sororities. Does that make me white, then? No. Does that make me a prep? Hardly. It's more of a class issue than anything else, yet I still feel like I'm betraying my heritage because I grew up middle-class and surrounded by white people. I don't speak much Spanish, only what I picked up taking Spanish classes at school and what my parents speak a little bit at home. I don't have relatives in Juarez, in fact, I feel embarrassed when people ask me if I know Spanish, or why I don't speak it. Does that automatically make me a snob, that I look Hispanic but don't speak Spanish? That I didn't grow up in the "barrio"? I am ashamed at that moment when other Hispanics who speak Spanish look at me and remember, oh, I need to speak to her in English, porque ella no esta como nosotros. It's not like I'm the one who chose to turn her back on her culture- blame my parents. I would protest against all the unfair treatment that being Hispanic has brought me, but I have been sheltered against it. I went to good schools and I've never had an accent, never had to take ESOL classes, never said "shicken" when I meant "chicken". My family is becoming more English-only, too, my sisters and my cousins and even my parents who grew up speaking Spanish. My sister lives in the Midwest, my second cousin lives in Ireland. My dad's girlfriend is from Michigan, my aunt married a guy from Michigan, my cousin's married to a guy from North Carolina. We're "assimilated", whatever that means, we are full-fledged members of the 21st century, y no hablamos espanol.

I finally relented to the pain and decided to get my foot checked out today. It only took two hours of waiting at the student health center, but at least now I feel like I'm not going to have my foot amputated or something. I'm going to get an x-ray too this afternoon. Sounds like fun.
I also went to advising. With any luck, i'll be out of school in less than a year! Hurray! I don't know whether to work today or just chill out. I'll probably put in a couple hours of study time then give up and spend six in front of the tube.

Check out this article. Now that sounds like a cool job.

I hate that Tylenol commericial where the little girl says she's happy that her little brother is sick. I think it's pretty disturbing when you can take joy in the suffering of others.
Anyway, my foot still hurts a lot. I limped all the way to class today. I think I need to go to the doctor :( . I really really don't want to go. I don't want to hear what they will have to say, like that I have to wear a cast or have surgery or stay in bed all day. But it hurts and it is not going away. Sigh.

So I went to my appointment with the therapist today. She told me that I should take some antidepressants. I don't care what she says, I'm not going to take them. I've had a bad week, that's all. Every therapist I've ever been to has recommended antidepressants. They're just like candy, right?
I guess my problem is that I'm not psychotic, I just want someone who will listen to my problems. I go to her for help but I don't even want help. Ugh. I don't know what I should do.

Thank you, God, that today is almost over. I finally turned in that assignment, but I think that I will end up doing poorly on it. The quiz was today and I did a lousy job of studying for it. He told us what was going to be on it, and I didn't bother to study the details so now I am really regretting it.
More stressful than all those assignments is working with people all day. I am sick of working in a team! I just want to mess up things on my own without dragging the whole team into it. This one guy on our team was like, well, what do you think since you know everything? He didn't say it to be mean or anything, but I still felt bad. I guess I've been bossing people around. I don't like a team with a lot of strong personalities, where everyone wants to lead, but the problem with our team is that we don't really have that "leader" personality. No one wants to take the lead. So I say something because I do think about the project a lot, and they will all listen, but I really don't know what they think. They will agree with my ideas and not criticize them or improve them, just take them at face value. That's great, right? No- I wish there were more discussion going on about the ideas- I know my technical experience is very very limited and I hate to feel like I'm dominating the meeting. And if I'm wrong, then we're all wrong. I hate that hanging over my head. I end up wanting to control everything, though, and I start going crazy with all the details involved.
People problems. I get so nervous about saying things to people. Talking embarrasses me. The way I look, talk, and act around people embarrasses me. I will purposely avoid running into people I know because I don't want to have to talk to them. That makes me seem even more rude. Then when I am forced to talk to them, as in a group or something, the situation is extremely awkward. I can't relax around other people. Everything I do becomes about this social anxiety. I'm so afraid of what they'll think- that I'm stupid or that they don't want to listen to me anymore, or that they secretly think that I am doing a terrible job, or that I'm fat and ugly. I constantly second-guess myself. I don't want to be wrong, ever, but that's impossible.

I don't know what I did to my foot but it just got a lot worse. I was coming down the stairs, walking like normal. I even got onto the sidewalk. Then there was like this crunching thing, like my toes were kind of curled up tightly and I had just stepped on them really hard. It hurt so badly. Every step hurt and I limped over to my car and lied down in the back seat.
I can walk still, but very slowly. I managed to hobble over to campus at 3:30.
I'm having popcorn for dinner. Again. Big quiz is coming up tomorrow. I am afraid. I'll probably study all night. OK, until midnight, maybe.
I am starting to feel depressed. I am stressed over my classes, my foot hurts like hell, rent was due today and I didn't pay it, and I feel sad and anxious. I saw a picture of myself taken in January and I look so ugly, like I don't even recognize myself. I am fat. Yuck. I feel really really bad. I am losing sight of God. I feel robotic- I need a heart. Or some courage. You know, like the Wizard of Oz.
Today some guy from Microsoft spoke to our career class. In a way I was in awe, like you know that sounds like an amazing job. I want that job. In another way I was like that is exactly what I don't want to turn into. A corporate drone doing all for the good of the company. And for money. Microsoft has so much money. Money, money, money. Money makes the world go 'round. Monopoly money. Bill Gates alone has enough money to give every person in the world $5. He could pay off the Texas state budget deficit. Bill Gates could give everyone at this university a full-tuition scholarship. Chump change for him.
I've been reading that book What Should I Do With My Life? and I expected it to be about people who have quit the rat race and decided to do something purposeful with their lives. In a way it is, but in a lot of ways not. Rat race = bad, right? The fact is, I can't eat air. I need money. This Microsoft guy seemed cool and likable, but something else- manipulative? Fake? Yeah, that was it. So, on the one hand, I'm thinking how cool it would be to work at Microsoft- no dress code, cool corporate culture, money, more money, benefits, e-mailing Bill Gates, Seattle. But then I think how wrong that is- a huge corporate conglommerate, a job that sucks you in and enslaves you, to be defined by that job. To play politics. Someone make it easy for me.

Well, here I am again, not exactly changed by those amazing books, but I guess now I can't say that nothing lucky ever happens to me. Otherwise, feeling ugly today. I felt totally ugly when my mom saw me this morning before church and handed me a hairbrush. Mom, do I need to remind you that I'm 20 years old, not 5? It upset me all day. Do I really look like such a mess? My mom and I rented My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and the part I could relate to was of the girl hostessing at the restaurant. Do I really seem that way to other people? Do I really dress that horrible? The answer to both of those questions is obviously yes. I know my personal appearance is on the decline. :( .
Lately I've been thinking that I need to get a job. Like a job where I can work lots of hours and save up some serious money. Wal-Mart, maybe? I'm thinking about going back. In the summer, though, not right now. It sure would be nice to have money and not worry about the cost of buying some new clothes. I am on a really tight budget, and unfortunately, I spend most of my "extras" money on fast food.
Which brings me to my weight problem. I ate an entire box of Russell Stover's chocolate candies today. How's that for dieting? I know I have a serious problem and I need to make some big changes. I'm being super lazy about diet and exercise. I'm totally self-medicating with food. The thing is, I feel so much better about myself when I do the whole diet/exercise regimen. Especially when I can feel myself losing weight. I really just want to get myself down to a size 8 and stay there and not worry about it ever again. The spirit is willing but the flesh is so damn weak.
So here I am feeling like crap, like I don't count as a person. Blech. I hate that feeling.

I went to the library today to print out an article off the Internet. The computer's name was Bam-Bam, like from the Flintstones. "Yeah," I said to the girl at the counter, "I'd like to print Bam-Bam." The name is funny to say. Those two syllables have not come from my mouth in succession for about 15 years.
After I had printed out that extremely interesting article about DSP processing, I went to the browsing section of the library just as an afterthought. Maybe I'll find something interesting, I thought. Lo and behold, I found not one but two books I have been wanting to read for a long time, shelved within inches of each other. I felt like I had found a buried treasure or something, it was that fulfilling. I grabbed the two books and checked them out. I walked back to my apartment clutching them protectively in my hands. I couldn't wait to absorb their contents, to immerse myself in the wonderful, probably life-changing ideas contained within those pages.

I feel so, so good right now, for no reason really. Maybe it's because I slept for over ten hours. Or because I finally got to clean my apartment and I don't feel like my shower is infested with bacteria. No, I think I have two words for this condition: spring fever. I am truly enjoying life. Life is worth living, people are definitely beautiful, the future looks promising. I feel like I want to experience everything, things I've never considered doing, and that depression is not really a bad thing, and neither is loneliness. I want to touch life and taste it.