Hello World! I am going insane from having to put up with everyone in the house today. It is so great when I have the computer and TV to myself and the house is at least somewhat quiet. But Mom's cleaning the garage, my sister is in and out of the house, the other one is glued to the TV. I can't take it- I need Blogger. I need peace and quiet to write about everything. I don't know, it has just been a neurotic day. The phone is ringing off the hook, there is no nutritious food in the house, I have articles to write and homework to start on and a test on Thursday.
My new quest: lose weight by September. Personal decision, I'm not going to obsess about food, I'm going to concentrate on exercise. It is an added stressor, but whatever, I've been eating a lot of junk and getting really out of shape lately and that kind of bothers me.

Hey everyone, it's Monday morning. Groan, but good news is that Friday is a holiday. Excellent. Anyway, so I am getting ready for another great day of Windows hacking, I mean programming.
I couldn't sleep last night. I stayed up until midnight watching Oxygen and lay in bed for a half-hour. I suddenly thought about the door being unlocked, and how it would fly open with the wind. I thought about that for five minutes, trying to convince myself that it was irrational, but I finally got up and walked to the door. Sure enought, it was unlocked. I locked it and turned off the dining room light, the TV was still on, and Mom was sleeping on the couch, and the dog was sleeping paws up on the carpet.

Old School is probably one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It was disgusting and I didn't even think it was funny. I was expecting a laugh a minute comedy, but my mom and I laughed about three times an hour into the movie, then we turned it off. Oh well.
The Hours, on the other hand, was probably one of the best movies I've seen. The acting was great, the story was great, and the women's anxiety was something I could really relate to. I didn't find it overly stuffy or self-important, which was what I read about this movie in the reviews.
So I am going to spend this evening writing my article for the newspaper. It is not too bad of a story, but I am getting kind of disillusioned with writing articles that will never see the light of day. I am put out by the way the "veterans" of the paper automatically get all the big news stories, so I get a lesser story that inevitably gets cut from an 8-page paper. I still get paid even if my story gets cut, but I really want to see my stories in print.

Anyway, so I don't seriously think I have a chance of getting a bf. I write here about all the guys I like at school or church or whatever, but there really is not much chance that I will get to go out with one of these people. For one, I kind of am too scared to put myself in that situation, like deliberately going after someone or putting myself in the right place at the right time as far as trying to get to know someone in that way. So I guess I sabotage myself. Also, I am not your typical girly girl. I don't wear makeup, I wear jeans and a t-shirt most of the time, and I'm overweight. Not exactly a stunningly gorgeous person. Should I do those things? Maybe- recently I caved in to my mom's pressure to get a new hair style. I don't object to that girly stuff, I mostly just don't like to spend time and money on things like new clothes and makeup. It gets expensive, and it is a pain to put on makeup every morning.

Friday. Awesome. Whatever. I rented "The Hours" and "Old School", which is an odd combination now that I think about it. I guess I'll probably be watching those alone tonight because Mom's going to Jim's apartment for a barbecue and my sisters probably have plans. Oh well.
Anyway, I've been thinking of loneliness and togetherness and what it all means. I think I am happier now that I'm living at home. I have people to talk to during the day, I smile and I vent my frustrations and listen to all theirs. I am not so alone and depressed. I don't have the time or resources to spend all day in front of the computer writing about how pathetic my life is, or listening to sad, mopey music, or bingeing on boxes of cookies. Such is the life of living alone.
It upsets me to think that I'm 21 and have never been on a date, never been kissed, etc., etc. I have had very few friends in my life. I've been in college three years, but sometimes I still cringe at the idea of talking to my classmates. I'm better than I was a few years ago, but it is still very hard for me to face things. I am insecure and I think the worst about people. I'm still not convinced that I am going in the right direction for my life. I spend so much time at home, I'm still very sheltered and I prefer it that way.

So it's Thursday and I accomplished very little. I took an hour nap that felt like less and watched TV with my sisters. In an unbelievable twist of fate I saw that guy I like walking through the Union at 10:30 AM. I was walking in the exact same direction as he was but I was way too embarrassed to say anything to him. In my head I was thinking, Oh, s***, I can't believe this, if he only knew I spent most of last night thinking about him. OK, not that much time, but I did write about him yesterday.
It was kind of bizarre that I kept seeing people I know- I saw my former therapist at school and didn't say anything to her because, I don't know, I'm kind of angry at her. I expect someone I confide in to be understanding but somehow she just seemed to minimize my problems, like that is no problem at all. I guess I can't blame her for not understanding me- I saw her walking through school like she owned the place, saying hi to everyone just as natural as can be.
Then I saw my sister's bf at the bank. I think he either didn't see me or just plain ignored me. Well, anyway, he got to my house at the same time as I did, which was also strange.

Ah, I feel almost relieved. The burden has been lifted, no more crappy messenger programs, no more phone calls to make, no more research class. For this week, anyway. I finally got to talk to that cute guy in research class. I was like, did we have an assignment in this class? He was like, no, and it's about time because we needed a break. Then I said nothing, but I did get to sit next to him while we were discussing ethics :-).
I don't know what to write here anymore. I'm incoherent a lot of times, I'm too serious. This afternoon I was waiting for a newspaper meeting to begin and I was so impatient, frustrated at the lack of organization. My article got cut yet again. I thought this one was a good one, too, about a basketball camp. Oh well, you can't have everything.
I'm tired of being like this. Sometimes I think of buying new clothes in hopes of not feeling like such a crappy person. I had two long-sleeved shirts in my closet, one was this terrible pale blue color that I hate, and instead of wearing it like I would usually do, I "borrowed" my mom's shirt that was hanging in the laundry room. In pictures I'm always surprised at how fat I look. I looked at myself naked in the mirror and it was really scary. I have major cellulite. I am also bigger in the chest area, something I've never experienced before. I'm not morbidly obese yet, but I am fatter than I want to be.
I want my writing to be crystal clear and original. I thought I knew a lot about writing, but maybe I don't know as much as I thought I did. I write here to get things out of my head, to unload, to release, not necessarily so that people can experience vicariously through my writing all the things that I go through. There is a huge difference, the difference between a novel and a journal. And then there's academic writing. Yeah, it's pretty boring- it's not the place to talk about my weight and my crushes and my boredom with life. Still, I seem to be pretty good at it because I know all the rules and I know how to spell and how to write coherent sentences. I've never imagined myself wanting to write papers, though. They seem so stuffy and intellectual.
Which leads me to my next point, which is that I can be such a snob sometimes. Every day I go to my school and think to myself how superior I am to all the students there. I think that I don't belong there. I don't know if that's true or not. Surely I was meant for great things, right? It seems that all the people I went to high school with left this town as fast as they could. I should have, too, right? I don't know. I question that decision every day, I think of all the crap that happened to me two years ago and wish I had just decided to leave town instead of wasting away here trying to be perfect and humble and poor. Sometimes I think that school has sucked the life out of me, that there is no such thing as the "real world" where people work and live thoughtlessly. I have learned to observe, to passively take notes and accept whatever the teacher says. I don't do things, I absorb them through osmosis.
Which leads me to my next point, which is avoiding confrontations. Forming relationships is an art, not a science. But everything is a science to me. I have tried to defeat my passive attitude in meeting people, to transform my technique which is basically to sit there and wait for someone to come up to me and ask me something such as "Why are you so quiet?". Not that I'm really quiet and retiring and content to just sit around and let life happen to me, more that I can't bear the embarrassment of someone not responding to my overtures, especially if I really like that someone. People disappoint me. I think it's the shallowness that does it. You will look at someone and just assume that they are a certain way. I am guilty of this myself- if I see that someone is too popular, I will automatically think poorly of them. I don't know, it just seems that if people aren't perfect, if they are fragile and tired and ignorant I dismiss them and think of how superior I am. And if people are too perfect, I think they are too uptight but I am jealous of them anyway. I am just disappointed with the human race in general, I am angry because I have failed to connect with people that I have wanted to connect with, and the few connections I have made I have lost.

Things are not getting better for me. I have an avalanche of work to do. The graphics final project is due tomorrow at 1. I am halfway done. I must get it to work. Like have to, really have to. For OOP, all I have is a blank table. Not good, seeing as the project is due Tuesday. And is worth 40 percent of my grade.
I'm turning into a zombie. I alternate between sleep and computing, sleep and computing, over and over again. Which reminds me that I still have to edit my short story for creative writing class to turn it in Wednesday. I guess I'll have time for that Tuesday after I turn in my abysmal project.
Even though I have all this crap due, I comfort myself by contemplating all the free time I will have starting on Thursday- a month of free time. I hate living like this. It's so narrow, dehumanizing almost. All I can think about is myself. Me, me, my stuff, how will this affect me. All I can see is the here and now. I'm used to lying around thinking about the meaning of life. Now I'm lying around thinking about how much work I have to do.
I haven't read a regular book (non-textbook) in about a month. I haven't exercised in about the same amount of time. I haven't cleaned my apartment in three weeks. I'm tired all the time, I'm worried all the time, all I ever talk about is work.
Sometimes I think about the past- it's funny how a song will take me back to a time in my childhood or adolescence. A guy who went to high school with me was our waiter the other night. I didn't say anything to him about it. But I kind of recognized him, and then I saw how he acted and then I knew it must be him. He was always funny and popular and a true "jock" in the most cliched way possible. I wonder if he dropped out of college- something I'm contemplating right now.
And then there's my sister and her prissy ways. She sent me an e-mail the other day. I miss her sometimes, but we've grown so far apart I sometimes don't think that she's the same person. I don't know why I'm so stuck on high school. But in the past couple of years, it's like she evolved into one of those people who were just too cool for me. She and her friends strike me as rich and spoiled and I feel so much lower on the social totem pole than they are.
I'm the last one to bloom, if that ever really happens. Why can't I just grow up? Does growing up necessarily mean growing apart? I've left home, but I've yet to really forge my own life, or at least what other people see as a life.

I am becoming jittery. I wish I could be better at things. "Wish I had died instead of lived." Sometimes I do feel like that.
I feel like such a failure at work. I know it's not exactly the best job in the world, and I don't want to have this job for the rest of my life, but it still frustrates me that I'm so bad at it. I think my boss and my coworkers see me as a total flake. I mess up all the time- I make the wrong drinks, or forget something on an order. And I have a hard time talking to people, even just to tell them something about the order, or saying hi, or asking for my paycheck. Today I made this hot fudge sundae, and it looked so bad that someone had to make it again. It looks like I don't really know what I'm doing. Which I don't, a lot of the time. I don't think I'm a terrible employee- I don't steal, I always get there on time, I do what I'm told, that kind of stuff. I'm just not the kind of person who gets ahead. I'm the kind of person who gets stuck doing the same job forever because they never get promoted, or never ask for a change. How depressing. I guess the point of this is that I know I could do a better job than I am now, but for some reason I choose not to. Laziness? Apathy? Being a spoiled brat? One of the above.

Mom nearly sliced her finger off right now. I feel really bad because I've been sitting around watching her do housework and not being very nice about it, either. I don't want her to be hurt. I know she'll be all right, though, since she told me to stay behind so I could take the cookies out of the oven. Things like this make me afraid. When no one is home to help her, how would she get to the hospital?
I am in such an awful mood. I think I've nearly earned the night off from studying since I stayed at school 'til nearly 4. My messenger program kinda/sorta works. I even asked the professor, the German one, about it, and he gave me a good explanation even though I think he was surprised at how little I understood about it at this point. It *looks* like a messenger program but it doesn't really act like one yet.

It's 2:43 pm, I am writing on Blogger. I should be at school but I am dragging my feet on this. I got two more days to work on my messenger program. Today I added two buttons. Progress. I have three days to make this functional. I got newspaper stuff to do, too, plus research stuff, plus trying to watch six hours a day of TV. Dear God, please make me a more productive person.

Windows programming is driving me crazy! I am going to have to turn in a piece of junk. That sucks for my grade. Here's to making the assignment unclear and unusually difficult with no good help from the examples on the Web or in the book. I hate homework. I wish I could watch the Gilmore Girls. I did watch the Gilmore Girls instead of trying to figure out my homework. My heart is not in doing stupid homework. I can't summon the guts to ask for help so I am lost on my little boat in the middle of nowhere. People suck.
I'm rambling. I really want to talk to my mom and have her tell me everything is OK. It's like, I can't be alone, I must have someone to commune with. "I'm not alone 'cuz the TV's on, yeah, I'm not crazy 'cuz I take the right pills every day." Bleed American by Jimmy Eat World.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. What a great afternoon. I turned in my article about two hours ago and I'm not starting on homework until tonight, so I have a few hours of free time carved out. Cool. I'm sort of chilling out here. Mom's friend Jim is here. I think I've been kind of rude to him, whoops. I guess it's weird for me to see him with my mom. I wanted her to make a really big breakfast at home, but instead Jim brought CiCi's spinach and mushroom pizza with no cheese. I was a little disappointed.
So it's later and I'm kind of bored and nervous at the same time. I'm getting antsy, like I need to get some homework done. I resisted the urge to take a nap at 4 pm, but now I am crashing. I wish I could just lock myself up in my room and the house would be totally quiet, but that is not going to happen. Someone comes in and bothers me, I hear the front door open and close, hear my sisters making some noise, I worry about the dog escaping from the house. I worry that I'm not getting enough work done, so I get even less work done. I've calculated that I do about six hours of work on an average day. That's not much. I could do much more than that.

It's Saturday afternoon. I just finished my GRE test, and I already got the results through the miracle of computerized test-taking. Not too bad: 630 V, 730 Q, don't know yet about the writing. I am really tired, maybe not exhausted, more like I wish I could have one day a week to sleep late and crawl out of bed in my pajamas without immediately thinking of all the tasks I need to finish. I want to watch The View and Oprah in the same day, read a novel, and paint a picture. It is amazing how relaxing it is to not be under a time limit, to take all the time you need to get things done. There will be time for that soon enough, though.

It has been a frustrating day. I didn't turn in my messenger assignment because, frankly, it didn't work. I have been getting linker errors since yesterday that have prevented me from doing a normal editing job. So I have the window and the TCP/IP connection cut and pasted together in one program, with multithreading going on. So I assumed that it was working but now I'm questioning whether I did the right thing.
A big part of the problem is that I am afraid to ask anyone about it. There's this girl in my class I used to be friends with, but it's weird that now she won't even say hi or anything to me. It would be awkward for me to ask her if I could copy her program. It's pretty annoying to hear her talk about the program through the entire class with her other friend, while I'm sitting right there with no clue on how to do this thing.
The professor is German, and he fits that stereotype of German people, very abrupt and authoritative. I was afraid to ask him about it because I thought I would look really stupid. I skipped class the day he lectured on networking. I feel like an idiot right now. I feel like crying. I don't know what I'm going to do about this, turn it in late, don't turn it in at all, drop out of the class? I think it was a difficult enough assignment that most people in the class had some trouble with it. Still, I can't just not turn it in, even if I get like a 50 on it, I need a grade.
I just want to be alone. At times, when I lived at my apartment, I would have done anything just to come home and feel taken care of and have people around to talk to. But now I feel kind of stifled. Everything is taken care of, which leaves me with less incentive to do actual work, and having people at home to talk to makes me less inclined to talk to people at school.
There's this guy in my research class I've known since freshman year. The first day of class I sat down right behind him. Today I came in to class about five minutes early and he was the only one in there. I said "hi" and plunked my stuff down in my seat, then left to get a drink of water to avoid a potentially awkward situation. I always feel weird being friendly to MOTOS, like they will think I'm hitting on them or something. I would not want him to think that, I know that he has a girlfriend, and besides, it would be futile because he doesn't think of me like that. How do I know? I just do, because I think if there were some inkling of attraction on his part, then he would try to talk to me or something. Instead, he's like, well, there are all these kids around here for summer programs, and I was like, yeah. Literally. Then he asked me if the water fountain was working and I said yes.
Then this other really attractive guy in that class was looking at books at the Union book sale, and I was on the other side of the bookshelf! I nearly died because, well, there was my chance, and I blew it. I actually think that guy is totally hot and he seems pretty smart, too. And we have at least one thing in common, right? Once again, I am so afraid. I look at myself and think, you are ugly, no one would think you are pretty or smart or fun. I don't want to face rejection and feeling awful. I feel pretty lousy right now anyway.

Hey, what's up everyone? I am tired even though l didn't get much done during the day. Mostly I did my laundry and the dishes, watched Oprah, and worried about the GRE. It is on Saturday and I am so nervous. I'm still not sure about grad school- some bad GRE scores could kill that idea.
Mom threw a party for my aunt yesterday. It was her first party in a while, and because I know my mom's ways I stayed out of the house until 3 pm. She is like a madwoman when it comes to party preparations, and this time was no exception. She gave me tasks to complete as soon as I walked through the door. I fetched ice from 7-11, made a decorative display out of different-colored olives, and arranged croissants in a basket, among other things.
I've been absorbed in Living History, Hillary Clinton's autobiography. I try to take everything with a grain of salt because I know that this is not exactly a bare-your-soul bio. Still, it is compelling to me because I can see myself and my parents in it at times. Besides that, I grew up during the "Clinton era." In junior high and high school I read a lot about all the scandals, and I went to a Christian school where people seemed to personally hate the President and First Lady. Looking back, it all seems pretty stupid. How can you say things like that about someone you don't even know? Sure, disagree with the politics, but don't trash the person.

The concert was fantastic. American Hi-Fi, Sugar Ray, Matchbox 20- the bands were all amazing, and we had seats on the floor! Those are some hot guys. Matchbox 20 played all their "classics" and the entire crowd was singing along to them, too. It was so, so cool, I had a good time.

The Matchbox 20 concert is today. Hurray! I am at home and it's great. I am not getting much work done, but it is great nevertheless. Last night I skipped my homework to watch Meet My Folks. I admit I'm being kind of indulgent lately, but who cares? I'd rather die happy than overworked and miserable.

Another day. I think I need to get some exercise or something because I feel so sleepy all the time. I bounced my research proposal off the professor today- at least she didn't end up grilling me like she did some other people in the class. I thought she would start laughing or asking me for my sources, and I have very few of those. Windows programming, that is another story. We have to write a messenger program- how am I going to do that? I am totally lost in that class. I don't even want to ask for help because I don't want to show my ignorance. I don't know where to start.
My allergies keep getting worse. I have all this phlegmy stuff caught in my throat. Gross and disgusting. I came straight home today and it was so great. I watched Magnolia and took a nap halfway through it. Then back on the PC to do something resembling work.

I have a sore throat and I feel drowsy. I slept for an hour and a half, but I woke up just as drowsy. Yesterday I bought two books, Living History by Hillary Clinton and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. Hillary's autobio was to satisy my gossipy side, the other I've heard about before and I thought I'd give it a shot. This on top of the two books I already have checked out of the library. We'll see if I'm reading *any* book during the week. I'm taking the GRE on Saturday of this week, I'm going to the Matchbox 20 concert on Tuesday, I have tons of work to do for my research class, I'm still working for the newspaper, etc., etc.
Things are all mixed up, I feel like I'm doing things all wrong. I have kind of dissed religion in the past, but with God in my life things make more sense. I feel at peace. Right now I feel like I'm lost on a boat in the middle of the ocean. I don't know where I'm going, tossed up and down with the waves. I wish I could say that God is the most important thing in my life, but that's not true right now. I have been selfish and proud- I've pretended that I could solve all my problems myself but that is impossible.

I had weird dreams last night. I dreamed I was thinking about killing myself, not that I actually did it in my dream, but I thought about the different ways I could do it. Then at the end of the dream I was riding in a speeding car and I thought, this is it, and prayed to God as the car went out of control. Scary.
I've got some major reading to do this weekend. But I also want to unwind some, get that tight feeling out of my chest, head cleared and open to new possibilities. I want to wash my bedspread and clean my room, and that will make all the difference in the world. Really.

I called my dad last night and he wasn't home. Then he called me on his cell phone and I was really embarrassed because I had called just to vent my frustrations and two minutes into the conversation he was like, I'm at this Grass Roots concert. First of all, how did he know that I had called his house? Two, why did he bother calling me back if he was at a concert? Three, why did he stay on the line so long, making it appear that he had at least a couple minutes to talk? He asked me a few times, Are you *sure* you're OK? What does he think, I'm about to leap off a bridge? So that was a bummer.

I am taking the night off. I put in a somewhat full day at school- I didn't get home until 5. The research thing is done, it will be sent off tomorrow to be read and scrutinized until August when we will get a decision on whether we will be funded. I wrote a little blurb about myself for the project describing my qualifications, and it was strange. In previous versions of my resume, I've felt like everything I've written is an exaggeration, that I'm just pretending that I have experience and I know these languages and I'm proficient in Word. But I didn't feel that way this time- this time I really have worked with those languages, going on three years now, I worked with Word a whole lot last year, I wrote some specifications, and I've done reasonably well in my classes. I'm almost finished, I'm 18 hours shy of a degree. Well, it looks good on paper anyway, whereas my resume looked pretty empty before.
In high school, music and movies and TV were important to me. Now I watch dramas on TV for a cheap laugh once in a while, I see all the plot holes and remind myself of how fake and elitist they all are, but at that time I could really get into them. I remember watching the first episode of Dawson's Creek and how moving it was to me. Felicity, My So-Called Life, thirtysomething, Once and Again, all those shows really made an impact on me. They made me feel as we were all united in the experience of adolescence, that it was an important time and we were important people.

Here I am at the computer lab. Yay for me, I got my Windows programming assignment to work. I am about to put in an hour or two of work on a research proposal. Research: Is it a hoax? Sometimes research papers prove things that are extremely obvious.

It occurred to me today that I have not changed much since one year ago. I feel the same way, I'm still shy, probably even shyer than I was, if that is even possible. Everything is so tiresome for me- sitting through a meeting, doing homework, going to classes. I should talk to people, I kind of want to talk to them, but I usually don't. I don't feel like programming in Windows or reading papers. I don't feel like getting a job. I don't feel like cleaning the house. I do feel like sleeping and watching TV and using the computer all day. Everything else is such a hassle- writing an article for the newspaper, which takes some actual effort to get interviews and stuff. To finish my assignments I have to go to the computer lab, a huge hassle right there. It takes a surprising amount of effort to dig up a research paper, probably more than actually reading it. And getting a job requires getting an interview, then scheduling time for it, then getting to the job every day.
The novelty of these things has worn off. When I was 18, I was dying to get a job. I was excited to be working and earning money. And going to college was cool because it was new and the possibilities were wide open. Now it's kind of like, yeah, a job is cool, but you have to work a lot for not much money. School is OK, but to be good at it you have to want to be good at it.

I left one page of my assignment on the computer desk last night.

It's 8 pm. Finally, a day when I don't feel tired by noon. I've been working on things and worrying about them, too. I've slogged through papers about data mining I have no hope of understanding (at last, I realize the purpose of all those math classes in the degree plan. Too bad I didn't pay much attention in any of them.).
I let these kids wash my car and now I'm regretting it. I don't know if it was my imagination, but the car seemed kind of scratched, like someone had rubbed a Brillo pad on it, and they left all the soapy residue on it. Well, OK, I thought, it's my good deed for the day, I gave this little boy $5 anyway, which he put in his brown leather wallet. Then this girl comes up to me, Hey, did you see a brown wallet around here? I say no. She says, Well, we lost it. There goes five bucks.

Well, things didn't turn out as I thought they would. My editor at the newspaper was really cool about the article. She basically let me off the hook for the story. Not everyone would be so understanding.
Cool, Blogger has finally upgraded my blog. It looks nice =). Anyway, so I am breathing a sigh of relief about one thing, stressing out on other stuff. I went to see a prof who is advising this project proposal I'm working on, and he grilled us on all the holes it. And scheduled another meeting for tomorrow. I think I'm ODing on research.

It's way too early, and way too hot, to be doing work this morning. My e-mail is not working, and it is really getting on my nerves. It sounds like today will be a day filled with minor annoyances. Great.

The pastor read from Luke 14 this morning:
"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters- yes, even his own life- he cannot be my disciple."

I am super lazy today, again. I took a nap about 2 pm, now it's almost 4! I'm supposed to be working like a madwoman finishing up my unfinished assignments. Supposedly I can't start because certain people won't cooperate. Or is it my fault that things weren't done earlier?
I am so happy to be alone in the house. It gets so noisy when I want to take a nap, with people going in and out all the time and turning up the TV too loud. Finally I can put on Beach Boys music and sing along. I can have the computer all to myself. It is almost like it was back in my own apartment. Except it is so hot. The AC is *not* working. And no more Cokes left in the fridge :-/.
Why is it that projects never turn out as well as you expect? You have this great and amazing idea, then you actually start to work on it and it turns out to be too damn much work, so you scale it back. I want to write The Great American Novel, after I build the most wonderful data warehouse that ever existed, and live the most spiritual life any regular person (besides Jesus Christ) could live, and be the most promising reporter of my generation. So far I have not come close to accomplishing any of this, and I probably never will. No, the fact is, I never will.

Hey, how 'bout Saturday afternoons and I'm still in my pajamas? Yesterday I was planning to go to the library and get my transcripts, finish up my research project and shower (not necessarily in that order). So far I have done none of the above, I started watching Sixteen Candles (and I wonder where my angst comes from?). Last night I met Jim, my mom's date. He's short, fat, and bald, but Mom seems to like him. The dog got sick last night but she is OK this morning.

Ah, the afternoon off. Then going to a wedding. Sleeping in tomorrow- too good to be true. Missed Windows class today to work on research assignment, going up and down elevator all morning. Talking in phrases. Why? Don't know.

I stayed at school until 4 pm. I can't believe that. I spent like two hours in the newspaper office and I finished my Windows assignment. I'm really tired because I watched Conan O'Brien last night with my sister. Conan and Jerry Lewis, that is a strange combination. Anyway, I'm trying to motivate myself to do some work. Research is surprisingly hard. It is a different kind of tiresome.
I've been obsessing over this newspaper stuff all week and today I had a perfect chance to interview someone but I blew it. One simple thing can make all the difference, the difference between having the article nearly done and having it completely not done. I chickened out. Darn.
I wish I had some kind of manifesto about life that I could post. Accumulated knowledge? Come on, now that is moronic. Last year I kept a kind of scrapbook of things I read off the Internet, with tips on getting out of depression and getting ahead, what is attractive to MOTOS (according to a survey), cool sayings, stuff like that. Then I stopped doing it. It was all common sense, anyway, but sometimes I need to be hit over the head with it.
There comes a point when you realize things are not in your control at all. We all will die, and not one of us knows what comes after that. I flew on an airplane this week and takeoffs and landings scare me a whole lot. Statistically, that is when most accidents occur. We really are in God's hands when that plane leaves the ground. Chance, probability, fate, destiny, that truly is God's work. I won some money in Las Vegas, more than the people I was with. Why did I win? Honest answer: I don't know. God's will, fortunate accident, fate, beginner's luck, none of the above?
Will I ever find love? I don't know. Will it matter? What am I going to do? Will it be important or will I be kicking myself for not doing something I know I should have done? I'm going through the motions, doing things that should make me happy, that I should be good at, that should be my calling but somehow aren't. Most of the time I just sit and listen to everyone else talk, talk, talk, and I don't have anything to say. If this is going to be my life's work, shouldn't I have something more to say about it? Instead I feel dead, compulsively nervous, trudging through my work like a zombie.

It's Wednesday afternoon, the day I thought would never come. I looked at June as far away, and now it's here and I am stunned with the amount of work that has accumulated. I've blown off my newspaper job for this week trying to get my bearings for summer school and this research proposal I'm working on. I kind of forgot that you actually have to study and do homework for school, not just go to lecture. It doesn't help that now I have to drive to campus instead of living there.
My article got cut from the paper :-(. I expected that to happen, though. It wasn't a very interesting article. And my next one's not looking too hot, either.
I had McDonald's for dinner. I used to have that all the time when I lived at my apartment. Talk about filling. But good, I must admit.
What kind of song is Bohemian Rhapsody? It doesn't make much sense to me. It's like a rock opera, I guess. Whatever.

One of my assignments is to write about where I want to be ten years from now. Ten years? How about one year? Six months ago I said I wanted to be a magazine writer. The year before that I wanted to be a bioinformatics scientist. Now I don't want to be anything, lol. The truth is, I love writing. It is the only somewhat productive thing I can do for hours and not get bored out of my mind, and I have been told that I have at least some aptitude for it. So why not try to become a writer? Maybe this sounds snooty, but I guess I feel that it is not a *real* profession. A real profession would be a software engineer or programmer, a research scientist, a project manager. Work has to be hard and dirty and tiresome. The salary must be 40 or 50k with benefits. I must move to a major urban center and report to a cubicle every day. Voila, I am a successful person.
For the past year or so, I have had virtually no enthusiasm for my "future career." Every job is a sham, money makes the world go 'round, and it is the bottom line for any place you go to work. Sure, I could become a writer but get paid very little, or very little compared to what a CS job would pay. So I am still undecided, you didn't really expect me to decide the path for the rest of my life, did you?

I can't believe how tired I was right now. I took a 3-hour nap. I am really worried about the things I have to do, i.e. school and activities. I got to school and I was completely lost after missing the first day. My article is heading south as I fail to make any progress today. Darn, it's not my fault, but it kind of is when I take a long nap instead of going back to school. At least I don't feel like the living dead right now. Tomorrow will be better, I hope. Wouldn't it be cool to take the whole summer off?

I'm back from Las Vegas. I had an amazing time, but right now I am tired. I have tons of stuff to do now that I'm back, too, like mailing off my credit card bill, going to summer school, writing an article for the paper, buying books, getting my car fixed, etc. but for now I am going to relax in front of the computer.