I wrote this message to myself a year and a day ago on futureme.org. Some names censored to protect the innocent.

(this message was composed on Mon, Mar 29, 2004)
Dear FutureMe,
Hey, what's up? If you're still around, I hope you are thinner and more motivated about life in general. Are you still in grad school? Are you still working less than 20 hours a week and living only for the time you can stop working and veg in front of the TV?
> Yup, still around. Yeah, I'm thinner and I'm more motivated. Still in grad school. Still working 20 hours a
> week, but not so obsessed with TV.
Cheer up, girl. You're going to be twenty-three. Damn, that is old. Right now I am 21. Remember being 21, remember going to the Circle K and buying a six-pack for the first time? Now you're pushing 25. It's a beautiful day. Today I saw a van going up in flames just like you would see in a movie. I didn't get any work done except to read a book about nuns. I went to my Theory of Operating Systems class and sat behind E-----, that cute guy. I am reading a paper to give a presentation on in Theory of Computation. My sister bought a prom dress. We got some sad news from my aunt. Is Bush still president in the future? I hope not.
> Sadly, Bush is still in the White House.
Do you still have that crappy $5 radio in your car? I hope not as well.
> I upgraded to a $10 radio that actually has good sound.
In the news: Richard Clarke rats on bush, Gillispie quits as UTEP coach and Doc Sadler is the new guy, terrorists bombed Spain a few weeks ago, and some other stuff. Are there still troops in Iraq? How is A------ doing in college? How about Mom? Is she retired yet?
> Still troops in Iraq. Looks like they'll be here for awhile. My sis is doing fine in college. Mom found another > job.
Enough for this e-mail. I hope you are well, futureme.
Love,
Annette

Wow, this was an exercise in absurdity. I can't believe I signed this message "Love, Annette". I was trying to be sarcastic, but instead I sound kind of creepy. The whole message is pretty random and really sour. I like to think I've gotten past the sourness in the last year.

My new favorite drink: Bolthouse Farms Perfectly Protein Vanilla Chai Tea. It is rare when a product actually exceeds my expectations. Great flavor, not too sugary, has real vitamins in it. I highly recommend it.

So I'm hyper and nervous about tomorrow. I think I'm prepared. Well, maybe not, but I can't think any more. I'm tired of the whole thing. After this I officially retire from ever making presentations again. I wish. I'm always so damn nervous. This morning I lay in bed, repeating the phrase in my head over and over, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I can do nothing apart from God. Somehow that made me feel better. Why do I feel like I carry the world on my shoulders? And I must do everything right and perfect, because that's how everyone else does it? I surrender. Dear God, you got me, you win, I can't do everything on my own, I admit it.

It's already 9:30. I'm so tired and I have a headache. Easter Sunday, can you believe it? I got some great Easter candy. M&M bars from my mom, Dove chocolate eggs from my dad. Yum. Of course I will end up eating all of it. Maybe that's not such a great thing.

I got lost on the way home from my grandma's house, which is hard to do. A water main exploded so the access road to the freeway was blocked off. I ended up taking back roads, and since I'm a dunce at directions, it took me an hour to get home when it should have taken half an hour. Just great. So anyway, here I am home, trying to get some homework done, however unsuccessfully.

I can't believe I wrote what I wrote last night. It's kind of a dangerous thing to post since it's about work, but heck, I feel better. It was great to finally get that load off my chest. If I can get through class on Tuesday, then I can get through damn near anything.

Hey people. I'm here, of course, on a lovely Saturday night. The winds have finally died down. Thank God. Easter is always windy down here in EP. One Easter in particular, I remember so vividly, the picture taken of me with my hair flying everywhere, smiling big with the Easter basket in my hand. I'm 22 years old but I still enjoy Easter candy. Hopefully I will get some Cadbury eggs. Those are my favorite. I remember another Easter when I was about 10, I ate so much candy I wound up in the school nurse's office the next day.

So it's Saturday and I think I'm ready for a confession. About three weeks ago I did a stupid thing that led to one of the most embarrassing hours of my life. It was a Thursday. The professor wrote me an e-mail, stop by my office. I went. It was 11:30 AM. He said, I need you to teach the class today. The class I TA for, that is. I didn't really want to, especially with such short notice (class was at 3 that afternoon), but I had done it before and I performed reasonably well, so I said OK. My instructions were to go over the answers to the students' midterm exam and to have the students grade photocopies of their own exams, and then to briefly go over hash tables. I said yes to all this, even knowing I would have virtually no time to prepare. I had to attend my own class at 12. That left me with 1.5 hours to a) make sure I had the right answers to the exam, b) photocopy each student's exam, c) go over hash tables so I could lecture on it, and d) eat lunch. I looked at the exam and thought, this looks easy enough. The prof said to ask him any questions I might have about the answers to the exam. I asked him a couple questions, but time was short. I didn't even bother to fill out the whole exam. I figured I could just ad lib the answers to the rest of the exam, the questions I hadn't gone over with the professor, since I knew those so well. After that I spent 40 minutes photocopying and then grabbed a sandwich. At this point I wasn't extremely nervous. I was confident that I knew the answers to this exam. I had also planned to go over hash tables, which I was reasonably sure I could do as well, at least in very general terms.

So I get to class. I am all hyped up. I speak extra loudly, fast and robotic. I am nervous. I didn't really expect to be this nervous, but I am. I am trying to be confident. I am setting up the overhead, which is harder to do than it looks. I get up there, announce what the plan is for today. I hand back the exams. I put up my transparent copy of the exam. The other TA doesn't even know what's going on. He says, "Do you have the answers?" A very important question. I say yes. So I start going over the exam. Very first question. I let the students try to answer. There is a dispute over what the answer is. I don't have a definitive answer. Fine, that's OK, go on to the next one. I get to question 4 before I give an answer that is just plain wrong. The students correct me. That's right, the students in data structures get to correct this grad student. I try to stay in control, but by this time I've lost all the confidence in my voice and I'm having some serious doubts about how I'm going to finish this. Big red DANGER signs are flashing. I keep going. I fumble through the next few answers, asking for student input without being really sure of the answers myself. I get to the next page of the exam and I just freeze. Granted, most of the students don't even know the answer to this one. But here I am, supposed to be their teacher, supposed to be giving these students the answers to the exam as an authority figure who supposedly knows more than they do, and I don't even know where to start. I start to panic. One girl knows the answer. I ask her to come up and show me what she did so maybe I can show the class. She shows me, but my brain is not processing. Full-blown alarm bells are going off in my head. I sit there at the overhead, head down. I say quietly to myself, "I don't think I can do this." I do this for about a minute. The students talk among themselves. I hear one student leave. I am on the verge of tears, and I come extremely close to walking out of that classroom and not coming back. Finally I manage to say something. I keep going. I try to make the best of the situation. I try to involve the students, who are surprisingly still there and still listening to what I am saying. I manage to finish the rest of the exam, still giving some of the wrong answers, unfortunately. I pick up the exams. Needless to say, I don't go over hash tables. I leave, I go to the computer lab where I still have to supervise these students. I want to go to the bathroom and cry my eyes out. I want to go home. I want to hand in my resignation letter before I get fired. I never want to face these students ever again after I have made such a fool out of myself. How I got through that afternoon, I don't even know. The 16-year-old me would have just walked out. But I had to be mature, I had to act like nothing happened. I found a place in front of the computer and zoned out. I wrote the prof an e-mail, saying class hadn't gone so well and I took responsibility for not preparing but to please give me more notice next time he needed me to teach a class.

I have relived this incident over and over again in great detail since it happened. I have looked at it from every angle. From the students' perspective, here I am essentially grading their exams, which are like 20 percent of their grade, and I don't have the right answers? I have had incompetent teachers (though none quite as incompetent as I was on that particular day), and as a student I had no sympathy for them. None whatsoever, I ridiculed them and was very scornful of them. As a student, I hated to have my time wasted and not to have learned anything. And then here I am on the other side of it, and I put on this miserable performance. As A TA, I am supposed to be some kind of role model for these students, but I was like the student who barely studied enough to get a C.

I showed that I had a complete lack of common sense. First off, I should have said no to the whole thing knowing I had virtually no time to prepare for this, but since I didn't, I should have at least bothered to fill out the whole test with answers I knew to be reasonably correct instead of thinking up half-baked answers along the way, or letting students answer for me when I couldn't tell them whether their answers were right. Talk about a lapse in judgment. What kind of fantasy world am I living in that I couldn't foresee what would happen?

Finally, I already knew I wasn't the greatest computer scientist, but this made me feel like I should be back in 9th grade. Granted, the preparation time was short, but the truth is, I should have been able to come up with those answers. It was completely inexcusable not to have looked up some of those rote memorization answers in the class notes. And if all else failed, I should have been able to come up with those answers fairly quickly and easily through simple logic. Part of it was nervousness, but part of it was my lack of facility with math. I should have known this stuff, but there was this math haze around my brain, and I couldn't get the details right. Once again, C student mentality. Why bother with the details, I know I'm going to get partial credit anyway, right? This incident is proof that I don't deserve to be in grad school.

The professor was surprisingly understanding about all this. Too understanding, in fact. He asked me to teach the class again. And like a sucker, I am going along with this. Maybe he just didn't get how humiliating this whole thing was, how unprofessional I was, and that I should be fired to ensure that I will never do this again. This incident has really wounded me. I have cried so many tears. My confidence has sunk to really low levels. I'm lucky that I didn't get fired, or that I haven't faced teasing or scrutiny from those who witnessed it. But I have lost all credibility with these students. How can I ever teach them again when I have shown myself to be such a fool? I have no right to teach them, and yet that is exactly what I'm going to do. I really don't have a choice. I'm so nervous. I don't know how I'm going to find it within myself to do this. I'm going to have a panic attack if I have to stand up there in front of the class again.

So it's Thursday. Nearly time for me to get back to work. What a horrible thought. Otherwise, today was great. Mom treated me to a movie (Miss Congeniality 2) and lunch. Then I got home, took a brief nap, and watched Oprah. Finally I get to watch a new episode of Oprah.

Hey people. I spent this morning buying stuff. I bought two CDs, Hotel by Moby and Lost in Space by Aimee Mann. Then I went to Kohl's to buy some jeans. I found one pair that fit OK so I bought them. I was going to get my hair cut then didn't. I kind of like my hair at shoulder-length. However I still have a bunch of split ends. Maybe I will get it cut later.

I agreed to give a lecture on Tuesday. Am I insane? How the hell did I get suckered into doing this? I console myself by thinking that this is quite possibly the last time I'll ever have to get up in front of a class full of students and teach them from what little I know about data structures.

Lazy day today. I went to see my grandma since today is her birthday. I had a huge slice of chocolate cake with ice cream. Talk about sugar overload. I also got to see my nephew who is nearly two. He is adorable. His favorite toys are brooms. He finds them wherever he goes and carries them around and sweeps with them. It's totally cute, but I fear that he might be destined to a life as a janitor.

Yesterday I put on an Aimee Mann album and reflected on my life. I found this interview with Aimee Mann. Now this is a person I can relate to, possibly the only person more introspective than myself. It has some good advice about dealing with stress and fears.

The truth of the matter is, I do know the answers about the things that are bothering me. 1) I need to get over my shyness, no more excuses. That means making big changes. This is the one thing that would change everything if I could accomplish it. I have been imprisoned by this for years and I've been in denial about it for far too long. 2) I need to grow up. This means getting a real job once I get out of school and moving out of my mom's house. I want to feel in charge of my own life, and that is not happening as long as I live at home and live in a fantasy world of not paying bills and depending on my mom for so much. 3) It was probably a mistake to get into CS grad school. I'm not a very good CS student, period. I was a very average student as an undergrad, decided to go to grad school out of my extreme indecision, and am now reaping the consequences. The truth is, my natural inclinations lie elsewhere, and I was not able to change that even after five years of trying very hard to be interested in CPUs. I don't know what this means as far as career interests are concerned, whether I will stay with IT in the long or short run. But the important thing is that I have admitted it to myself.

First official day of vacation. I did my taxes online. I am getting a refund! Coolness. I was looking forward to renting movies, but Blockbuster did not have any copies of The Incredibles or Ladder 49 :=(. Maybe later this week... I'm really surprised at how slow time passes when you have nothing to do. I have actually gotten used to a work schedule, and free time makes me kind of uncomfortable. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get over that fast.

Long day today. I have a test. I haven't studied. Oh no. I don't know what happened yesterday, but I managed to get practically nothing done. I got home at 7:30, my dad took me and my sister out to this Italian place. I had a meatball sandwich, which was pretty disappointing. It had so many meatballs, and the truth is I really don't like meatballs all that much.

Lots of other stuff on my mind, too. Religious issues. Yesterday I posed the question to google: How did life begin? That shows you where my mind is. Meanwhile all the other things I need to work on pile up. Does it even matter how life began? I'm here, you're here, there's really no need to spend so much time contemplating how and why we are here. I'm thinking God must have had something to do with it. Not like I'm a creationist in the strict sense, but how else could this world have been formed?

I'm so proud.

My class let out early today, which is a good thing. Other than that, not much to say. I'm finally getting over what happened last Thursday, realizing the world keeps turning and no one really cares. Lesson learned, I'm moving on.

I was walking through the student union today, trying to find a place to eat my pizza, I came upon a jazz band playing outdoors. They must have been in the Army since they were all wearing fatigues, which struck me as kind of odd, since that's not what I usually think of when I think about jazz players. Jazz is all about improvisation, the military is about precision and discipline, it was a conflict of two worlds. I like jazz. If there were a soundtrack to my day, it would probably be jazz. The rhythm is that of walking down the street, of steady activity rather than heart-stopping events. Exciting but not necessarily loud.

Not a bad day today. I went to see my grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins. My cousin started talking about Furbies. I wanted a Furby, but I was too old to get one for Christmas the year they came out. My sisters had them, and I thought they were the most adorable things. I never could figure out how to get them to talk. The general consensus among my sisters and cousin was that Furbies were fun for about a day, then they were just weird and annoying.

At long last I contributed to kottke.org. I had some issues with my PayPal account, which gave me some time to think over whether I really wanted to support the site or not. I decided that I did, that it was the "right" thing to do. I read the site several times per day, and have been doing so for about three years. I'll spend $20 on a book or magazine subscription once in a while, so why should this be any different, particularly when I read and enjoy the site's content every day? If I ran my own general interest blog, it would probably be a lot like kottke.org. Maybe a little less pretentious (which Kottke himself notes in the About sidebar), but otherwise really similar.

As for the business model, well, I've read some pretty scathing remarks about the whole idea. But come on, there are very few people who could feasibly support themselves by blogging, and if you're one of those people, why not do it? At least for a short amount of time, maybe a year, it seems like a reasonable idea to fund a site with donations rather than advertisements or subscriptions. On the other hand, there are some messier issues, like maybe you aren't advertising per se, but you're doing it in an underhanded PBS sort of way, with long corporate sponsorship thank-you's, annoying fund drives, and content that is targeted to a certain type of person (one that is fairly well-off and has money to donate). I wouldn't see anything wrong with having some unobtrusive ads on the site. Everyone has to make a living. I usually ignore ads anyway, so who cares?

Anyway, I really do wish Jason Kottke well in his future endeavors. Full-time blogger, that has to be one of the coolest jobs one could ever hope to have, and since it can't be me, it might as well be him. It gives me hope that maybe I can have a job that is off the beaten path and doesn't involve spending a third of my life in a cubicle. Good luck, man, I hope all goes well for you.

It has been kind of a depressing week. An embarrassing incident occurred that I will not go into here, further weakening my already low level of confidence about school. I feel like I just smashed my thumb with a hammer, and it is still throbbing and will continue to hurt for a while. But I've been through embarrassing things before, and I will get through this one like I've gotten through all the others.

The good news: spring weather is here, I'm sooo happy about that. Also, I am almost finished reading My Life by Bill Clinton, which I have really enjoyed. There's so much about being president that does not get much coverage in the news, especially foreign policy stuff. I just ordered a new book on Amazon, too- Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott. I've read a lot of her other books and thought they were all great, so hopefully this one will be just as good.

Ask Matt, now on Mondays and Fridays. Exciting.

Hey people. Today was another long day, and supposedly Wednesday is supposed to be one of my shorter days at school. But I spent like three hours working on a group project. I wasn't into it. Sometimes I feel like I have the "system" down to the point where I don't even have to try in any of my classes. I guess after last semester and those unbelievably hard classes, the classes I have now seem like a walk in the park. But there is danger in that attitude. I'm getting lazy, and it's going to catch up with me. Discipline is the word that comes to mind...

I don't know why writing in a blog that is read by few if any people most of the time helps me feel connected to the world, but it does. I feel like I'm part of something, like the collective mind of the world. Once in a while, when I'm bored, I will go to a blog and hit the next blog link, read it and go to the next, over and over again, and it is really exhilarating. It is like going from one person's mind to another. And somehow that makes me feel less alone, too. It's just so rare in real life that I share part of my mind with another person, and that I feel I am doing it authentically and not putting up a front. And that's what I do here. Maybe it is sad that I'm so lonely in my real life, but that's how it is.

Blog therapy, you might say. I've been to real life therapy and blog therapy is cheaper and in a lot of ways better than real. I once went to a therapist who was about 60 and she just kept telling me to get a job and stop complaining. Not in those exact words, but close. And bloggers, well, they just seem to understand better the particular type of angst that I have in my life. If a therapist would spend 15 minutes reading my blog they'd get a better sense of who I was than in five hours doing weekly therapy sessions. You go to therapists and say, fix me, but that is ridiculous because they don't live your life every day, they don't understand where you've been and what you've done, they're sitting there listening to you because they're getting paid. And they generalize, they think you're just like everyone else and that you do things for the same reasons that other people do them, when maybe you don't. Two out of the three therapists I've been to has told me to take antidepressants. When I say no, they think I'm being difficult, but I guess it is just that I know that's not going to solve all the problems I have, maybe just make me feel happier about them, but they won't go away. I don't want to live my life on happy pills. I won't knock those pills for people who are clinically depressed, but I am not one of those people, I am just someone who is a little on the depressed side but not all the way over. And that's the way it has been for years, really, and I suspect that's how it is for everyone. A little on the depressed side but not all the way over. I get out of bed, I exercise, I take a shower and brush my teeth. I watch Regis and Kelly if I have the time and inclination. I do some work, or I slack off and make excuses, I go home and watch three hours of TV and go to sleep. I wouldn't say that this is the life of a person who is depressed. Could I be happier? I guess. If I had my dream job, if I had more free time, if I met the right person, if I had a better social life, if I had a better spiritual life, I guess I could be happier. But who knows, maybe I wouldn't be. I would probably end up stuck in the same old semi-depressed rut. I guess I'm saying that I'm not really depressed if I can get out of bed every morning and deal with everything I have to deal with. There is nothing wrong with me, I'm the model of health, physically and mentally. I have everything I need, I'm well-fed, well-clothed, roof over my head, I have a supportive family. I'm well-educated, I have the resources of the entire Internet at my fingertips, I even have a job, what the hell more is there that I could want or need out of life? God himself to step down from heaven and tell me the secrets of eternal happiness? I'm really starting to feel silly writing this. But I do feel better. And thanks to the people of Blogger, I don't have to pay a therapist.

Excuse me for being wordy and emotional and all that stuff. Just to warn you...
Today I got to stay home from the class I TA for since there was a test. I really needed that break, since I was so overstressed. I felt almost like I was going to have an anxiety attack, I felt physically tensed up and panicky. Some deep breathing did the trick to calm me down a little. I don't know why I always feel the need to do everything right. To please everyone, not to step on any toes or God forbid I might get in some trouble. I plan things out minutely to avoid confrontations, then when things get bad and I can't control them there comes the anxiety. I guess this is where my people problems come from, because I can't control other people, and that simple fact drives me crazy every single day of my life. I am getting way behind on my thesis project, that bothers me, and it bothers me that I'm not going to be TA of the year. Oh well, what can you do but just carry on and try to do better...

My latest musical interest: Annie Lennox. I downloaded two of her songs (Why and No More I Love You's) and I have listened to them over and over the past few days. Her voice is amazing, and I like that the songs are very unique, not your usual warmed-over pop melodies, and that they have some meaningful lyrics.