I'm home again. After driving for twenty minutes in the pouring rain to school, walking the couple of blocks from my car to my thesis advisor's office (it's still pouring and I get soaking wet), then finding out that he is not there for the Jewish holiday. Then walking back to my car and driving all the way back. Now that's what I call a productive day.

I've been having a weird time of it lately. Yesterday I went to the library and checked out "What Should I Do With My Life?" for the second time. Yup, I wasn't able to answer the question the first time, so I am checking it out again, ha ha. Half the time I think it doesn't really matter what I do as long as I'm earning money. Instead of thinking about stupid philosophical stuff I should be finishing my thesis project and figuring out how to do stuff on the computer and applying for jobs. But then there is that other part of me, the petulant slacker, the Scarlett Johanssen character from Lost in Translation. I'm 23 years old and I still can't get my act together. I can't figure out what I want. I can't figure out what I should do. I've felt this way for years. It feels like years since I've cared about anything.

I guess I'm wondering what can I expect out of life? I don't want to expect too much, I don't want to be one of those types of people who wants to have it all and complains all the time because things aren't exactly the way they want them to be. At what point do you say, this is as good as it's going to get?

How do I explain this? OK so I'm in my last semester of grad school. I'm dragging my feet on finishing my thesis and on keeping up with my one class. I have a job I took over the summer, a job working at a newspaper that I took because I think working at a newspaper is cool. But now I'm kind of stuck in the middle. I don't really know what I'm doing in grad school, I'm not planning to pursue the research area my master's is in as a career. I don't know what I'm doing at the newspaper, either, though. I don't want to be a reporter, and I don't really know what other kinds of jobs I could do there. I'm half-heartedly searching for jobs that I'm qualified for, i.e. government jobs or corporate jobs in the area. But I don't know if I can stand that kind of life. I want to work on something I believe in, something that I like doing. I don't want to sign up for something just for the money.

And yet, it's all a big mess in my head. I'm so shy. I'm so shy I have a hard time functioning sometimes, like I can't even ask a professor to sign my application for graduation even though now I'm going to have to pay a late fee. I'm so shy that I rarely say more than ten words to my boss at work and would rather e-mail him than talk to him even if he is sitting five feet away from me. A part of me just wants a job where I can do my work and not be bothered, no matter what that job is. Even if it's the most boring job in the world. That's a lame way to look at things, I know, but I can't stand office politics. I loathe meetings, I hate confrontations with co-workers, I could not manage people to save my life, and I could not sell things to save my life, either. That narrows things down for me. Maybe it would be a good thing not to work in a full-time professional job. I could continue living at home, working part-time jobs until I find something I like. On the other hand, maybe I should just grow up and learn to play "the game" right now because I'm going to have to do it eventually. I fear I'm going to turn into more of an overgrown teen-aged bum, sitting around at home watching daytime TV.

Right now I am a blank slate. I really have no ambitions. Truly. I swear to you, I don't have any goals, other than to squeak by and graduate with my master's and to have a part-time job so I can pay my credit card bill each month. I guess what I fear most, more than being a twenty-three-year-old bum with a master's degree, is getting suckered into settling for a job that I don't even like, but that I do because I feel obligated, because I want to be "independent" and to get that independence I have to work for some corporation or some government agency for the next 20 or more years so that I can earn a pension. Does life have to be like that? I suppose not, but I'm not the type of person who can rustle up jobs just like that. I'd probably end up on aforementioned couch while I'm not working at an unchallenging part-time job that I'm overqualified for. Now's the time to get a "real" job, now's the time when it would be easiest to get my foot in the door, and yet I'm not doing it because I'm playing the part of immature 20-something slacker. OK, so, seriously, someone tell me what I should do.