Welcome to the Friday Night Rant. I am so grumpy lately. I am feeling downright misanthropic. Maybe I'm just tired and stressed out over the prospect of going back to school. Whatever it is, I am being mean and sarcastic.

Oh and now I have to worry about money. My check for $500 came in today, so that is a bit of relief for me. I will have money for books. I'm used to throwing money around for fast-food lunches and CDs and stuff, but if I don't have a job I am going to have to guard my money more tightly. I wish spending money weren't so much fun for me.

And then there is the never-ending internal debate about what I am going to do. Even if I finish grad school what then? Grad school buys me a year, but what am I going to do after that? I looked at the career center job listings today, and just doing that was enough to provoke me to tears. I don't know what's wrong with me. I have no confidence in my abilities. It's this weird thing where I don't want to compete, I don't want to have to perform in an interview, I don't want to be tested, I don't want to be rejected for a job. OK I know that sounds incredibly naive. I guess I am so comfortable in my little world that I don't want to go "out there" and have it all shaken up. I would rather sit here and live off my parents' money than go out on my own. Jobs suck, don't they? Life sucks, doesn't it?

I guess that one day I will wake up from this haze. I will go back to school and realize what I need to do, realize I need to get out there and talk to people and pull strings and look for a job rather than sitting on my butt, at home alone. I can't hide forever. I'm so afraid of being an underachiever. But it seems that is what I've become. I mean, I sit at home all day watching daytime TV and reading magazines. I'm unemployed, I have no career goals, no friends, nothing. People think that just because I'm in school I have it all figured out, but if they knew the truth I think it would shock them. The truth: I don't know if I even want to do this anymore. Lately I have become so repulsed at the idea of getting a job in this field. I think of endless nights in front of a computer. I think of that movie Office Space and I would rather be free than be enslaved to some money-making entity. It's not like I'm so ambitious. I don't want to leave this town, but in doing so I fear I will have severely limited my career options.

So if this isn't what I want to do, what is? I don't want to ditch it all and go off in pursuit of another degree. I'm so tired of school. I'd get a job before I'd sign up for yet more school. At least I'd be making money rather than having it leaking out of my bank account every four months.

Every time I think about this, I always come to the same conclusion: that it's in God's hands, not mine, and whatever I do it will be in service to the world, not to myself. That I won't choose it, it will choose me. Somehow that doesn't end it, though. I think I need concrete plans, five-year plans, ten-year plans, that I need to know all the answers right this second, I need to take career tests to pinpoint the exact perfect career for me. I know that's all nonsense, though. I know myself, I know my interests and abilities, I know where I am at this point in my life. If I need to stay home and take even more time off to figure it out, so be it. I am not at the point where I am absolutely forced into working a full-time job. So that option is there. I could even just stay in school and lay low for awhile, not think about jobs and the future and crap like that. It is all so overwhelming, but it could be very simple. One damn day at a time, study, study, study, try not to flunk out.