How much do I hate driving? Driving on the Eastside on a Friday afternoon is the worst. There's so much traffic, what a headache.

My sister is home safe even after I gave her wrong directions. She called me, lost, asking for directions in Colorado, and I accidentally told her to go east instead of west on the interstate to reach Denver. An hour later she calls back, we never hit Denver. She had been going in the wrong direction for over an hour. I was thinking west but said east. *Doh* I feel soooo dumb and like I really let my sister down when she needed me. She ended up getting home at 7:30 a.m., delayed for at least two hours by my stupid mistake. I am so directionally challenged. Oh well, at least she got home OK.

And then my sister gave me four souvenirs when she got home and I almost started crying to think that she thought of me there and I am such a dolt I can't even give her the right directions. I like to think I'm generous but I probably wouldn't think to get my sister four souvenirs. That is just how she is, the most generous person I know.

Anyway, so I am in this very emotional state and I feel like I could cry at the drop of a hat. Hence the theatrics over yesterday and today's events. I have got to stop worrying so much.

Tuesday. Last night I got lost on my way home from work. The freeway was closed so I went looking for the "back way". I ended up going up Scenic Drive, a road that snakes right along the side of a mountain. Driving on Scenic Drive at night was extremely scary for me. It curves all over the place and you are so high above the city, I was scared I was going to drive right over the side of the mountain. I was so scared that by the time I got off that road onto a flatter one I realized I had been clenching part the side of my mouth between my teeth and a tiny strip of my mouth was numb. I hate driving at night, it freaks me out and it's too bad that my job is at night. Food for thought concerning my current job situation.

My sis is out of town for a week, my other sister is here but soon to be gone job-hunting in D.C. I am going to miss my sister enormously, but I have to be honest and say I will be sort of glad to have my computer back. We need Wi-Fi in this house. Get ourselves a few laptops and we'll all be one big happy family.

I was watching Oprah yesterday, again, and they had this guy named Rabbi Shmuley on. For some reason, I really liked what he had to say. One of the families on the show about dysfunctional families looked a little bit like my family. It's too late to fix our family now. But I've seen my sisters talk to my mom like she is nothing and I can't stand that. Not acceptable at any age, I would say. The mom in that family said it's like each member of our family is going in a different direction. So, so true about our family, even in our younger days. And it seems our answer to discipline and chores is, basically, do what you want and keep quiet and Mom will do all the chores so she doesn't have to nag you. Once in a while she'll nag, but even if it becomes a big issue she will usually be the one to back down. Whatever, though, no family is perfect and like I said it's too late now to fix that stuff, now the solution will be for each of us to live apart and not have to deal with each other again as members of the same household.

Sunday. It's raining. Can't believe it's already June 25, summer is going by so fast.

Church today was about gifts of motivation. It kind of got into personality types. I think it's interesting that there are distinctive human personality types, so much so that a person can identify them and have the whole congregation nod in recognition, like, yeah, I know a person like that, or I am that type of person. I wonder why that is, could it be evolutionary? For example, some people are introverts, some are extroverts, but why aren't, say, all of us extroverts, if it gives you an evolutionary advantage? Maybe it's evolutionary on a society scale, like societies with a certain variety of personality types functioned better than societies with the same type of personalities. Just a thought, I wonder if any research has been done on it.

Thursday. I woke up to a phone call from the pastor's wife. How did you like the ladies' fellowship meeting on Tuesday? I didn't know what to say, what I wanted to say is that I wished we studied more of the Bible or at least a book or something, but I didn't have the heart to bash the study she put together. That's not really the point of those meetings anyway. The point is fellowship, getting together as women to talk about things, empathy, praying for each other. That's why I came and that's what I got. It's weird how even being the tiniest bit social has ripple effects, I mean, I go there on Tuesday, here I get a phone call that I never would have gotten had I not gone. The pastor's wife seems like a really nice lady and it's good to know her. So there you go, I guess it pays to get out of the house once in a while and not be a recluse.

I get frustrated with my life for the usual reasons. Not enough activity. And my job, well, I wonder about my future with it. I can't think of a satisfactory answer.

I spent a couple of hours in my room reading. Freakonomics and A Death in Belmont, both of which I've wanted to read for a long time and finally got lucky when they were available at the public library. They're both interesting and I'm trying to read both in one week.

I guess I want a fuller life and I'm trying to get that. But I always think of my ideal life somewhere in the future and the present is kind of like a waste, throwaway time before my "real" life gets started. But what is real life, anyway? I guess to me it is synonymous with busy life. Having a place to go everyday, people to interact with. Making money or earning grades at least. But some people do live like this. Working part-time or not at all, living off their spouses or parents or pensions, having to find things to occupy the day. Ladies who golf, housewives who look after their children and home, retirees. It's the good life, "la dolce vita" is the phrase I think of to describe it, well, at least in my situation. I do realize how fortunate I am. This is not a place I want to stay much longer, though. There's much to be said for making one's own way in the world. Having skills to offer that someone will pay for, being able to support yourself, even trying to make some kind of difference in a world gone to hell.

There's the reality of being alone to face. This scares the hell out of me. Come August, my sisters will probably both be gone again. Last year I got pretty depressed when that time came. Who will I have then to talk to, to bug, to rely on? Longer term, what if I came to a point where my family wasn't around- I moved to a new place, or God forbid something happened to my parents? I guess I would be forced to find support outside my family, which is something I've never really had to do. Scary thought.

Food issues. I ordered a book, "French Women Don't Get Fat". I never worried too much about what I ate until I was about 19. After some bad experiences I am now in the same boat as most Americans, which is obsessed with weight. I admit to self-medicating with food. I always think if I could just change my mind-set about food and go back to pre-college days I'd be set and I'd never have to worry about my weight again. Wishful thinking, you can't turn back time. The damage is done, my mind is now poisoned and I will probably always turn to food to deal with stress. This is bad and harmful. This is something I want to change. I remember having some kind of system I used to use in high school, like eat only one sweet thing per day. And I never used to do that food binge thing and feel totally guilty about it afterward. There just was not that weirdness about food that I now have, where I now treat food almost like it is medication and not nourishment. Kind of ironic that I'm much more knowledgable about food now, but I have these self-control issues I never had before, so I have these weight issues now than I never had back then. But I know with some work I can control my diet and lose weight if I want to since I've done it before. Well, we'll see what this book has to say, I probably know most of the stuff it says already, but it may provide some inspiration.

First day of summer. This actually makes me sad since the days will be getting shorter from now on. This is like the pinnacle of the year.

Summer and there's a lot of time to ponder. I wonder if I'm making the right decisions for my life. Can you ever really be sure you are making the right decision? Nothing is ever 100 percent. I look at my life and just see the broken things in it. I think about how miserable I was last year and how nearly unbearable it was. I'm so glad not to be in that anymore. But I look back and I regret it so much and I regret where I am career-wise because of that.

I think I'm about five years behind the rest of the world in maturity. It's taken me five extra years to figure out what I really want to do with my life, or at least have some idea. And relationship-wise I'm way behind, too. It's taken me a long time to get the hang of meeting people and not being completely afraid of starting conversations with them. And I've never had a serious relationship. Part of me doesn't even want to go there. But I wonder why I've stopped wanting that and pretty much ruled it out as a possibility. I used to think about guys and love and all that back in high school, a lot more than I do now. And then came college, and I kind of realized, I'm not an exceptionally pretty girl, I have the social skills of a cardboard box, and I was fat for a couple of years and it was always like, no one is ever going to want to be friends with me much less go out with me like that. So it was the very solo life for me, and now I am completely behind in that aspect of life. Maybe it is past due for me to stop living this narrow life and time to try to expand the network a bit, to make my life more into what I think it should be instead of just letting it stagnate. Sigh, easier said than done.

Where to begin? It was a pretty crummy day. Woke up at 9:30. Talked to Mom for awhile. Showered, watched tennis on TV, read the paper...and fell asleep again. What a life this is. I mean, it's hard to complain about a life like that, but it is just soooooooo boring. Something is severely wrong with my life. I don't have enough to do. I'm like retired people who have too much time on their hands and get depressed because of it.

And it's like, I used to have a sort of Internet life. Like I would spend an hour or two reading stuff on the Internet, checking out job options, updating my blog, etc. but now even that is gone because my sister uses the computer all day to job search. Which trumps what I use it for, which is like 80 percent entertainment, 20 percent substance. So she wins, I have lost what semi-productive Internet life I had, which may be a good thing since it forces me to look elsewhere for stuff to do. But still, I feel the loss.

And to deal I've been watching too much TV and eating too much. I feel like I'm entering this black hole of self-destruction where I have been before. I don't complain about my life to anybody, well, except here, it's an OK life, but I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated by the lack of privacy, by the boredom, by wondering what the hell I should be doing. I'm frustrated because I have no one to talk to. Like I say, I've been doing some pretty self-destructive things and no one really cares, no one sees and I don't express it. It's all pent up and it's like where does it all go. I want something different for my life and something greater but how to attain it.

I'm ashamed. This is no way to live. I lock myself in my room and try to figure out who am I, lost in all this. I don't feel people's expectations of me, I feel like those are all gone. No one asks me about myself or what I do or what I want to do, it's like my dreams are all gone away, here I am living like a loser and now that's what people expect of me. I don't want the confrontation, but eventually it will come up. But I guess there's no hiding that I am unhappy, I can try to cover it up but I'm not happy with where my life is headed at the moment.

Jobs. God I hate jobs and job-searching and all the crap that goes with it. But we must have jobs. Money and production and bosses. Jobs can be good, I guess. I guess my problem is that I never really thought much about what I would do after I got out of school. Now I'm caught here floundering. Things I hate to think about: resumes, networking, promotions, interviewing, pressure, stress. I hate all that stuff, I don't really want to spend hours creating the perfect resume or practicing interview questions but if that is what one must do to land a job, well, I may have to do that stuff. My problem is that I hate to play the game.

People problems. People frustrate me. I was thinking the other day, a lot of the time I hate being human. Having emotions. Having to deal with the messiness of human relationships. I struggle enormously with this. It's like the world was created for people who know how to manipulate other people, people who can sell themselves and their products. Those people succeed in life, the rest of us are at a distinct disadvantage. OK, it's not really that simple, but having people skills definitely pays off and I know I suffer because I lack them.

And why do I get to be this serious person and others get to be happy-go-lucky kind of people who don't worry about things the way I do? I am constantly sad and I want to reflect about everything and I see myself so negatively. I keep everything bottled up where others get into arguments and cry and get mad for no reason. And for them it's OK, but for me, never. Sometimes I want so badly to tell someone about my problems but then I hardly ever do. I guess I just feel like no one cares. I mean, they might listen to me for awhile but they are just taking some pity on me. Then they will go back to thinking about themselves and their problems. Or worse, they will be too busy to listen or won't want to hear it or they will listen to me and start criticizing me or giving me rotten advice, since they pretty much know nothing about me.

I'm just annoyed and this is all kind of stupid and trivial, and there's one answer for all of this, which is to be an adult and take responsibility for my life. Quit eating myself to death, quit wasting my time in front of the tube. Try to make connections with people even if I suck at it and I hate the process. Figure out something I want to accomplish, figure out some job I want and do what it takes to get it. Easier said than done. What else can I do, though, sit around and be enslaved to these problems for the rest of my life? I can't see myself going another year having such low expectations of myself.

Monday. Nervous mood. I'm watching Neil Young on Conan. My sister is Conan's biggest fan, so I've been watching him a lot lately.

Today's accomplishments: I did laundry, cleaned the bathroom, bought a thermometer and Gatorade for my sick sister, and took my car to Pep Boys to get the tires aligned and balanced. The car doesn't shimmy and pull when I drive it anymore, so that's good. Finally a productive day.

Lately I've been watching Oprah's 20th Anniversary DVD. It's pretty interesting, 20 years of interviews and of being able to do some really phenomenal and generous things. Giving away cars and donating to charity and educating people. It's pretty cool what you can do with a talk show.

I had this thought about writing. You try to find words to express a concept, but what if they are not the right words or the best words? It's an inexact science. Sometimes words don't even exist to describe your concept, or they do but you don't know them. There are always different ways to say the same thing, with some better than others, but maybe in the end the actual words don't even matter, there's just the thought, and if you can get it across you've succeeded.

So this morning I went to see an advisor for the graduate program in Rhetoric and Writing Studies at UTEP. That's right, the English Department. I dressed up for the first time in weeks, in black pants and a bright turquoise top I "borrowed" from my mom, I blew dry my hair. I thought I looked professional.

I walked across campus in uncomfortable shoes. I asked for the room number- 315. I walked up three flights of stairs. And I came to the room and she saw me and invited me in, this English professor/advisor. I asked a million questions. Financial aid. Types of classes. Internships. Admissions. I skimmed over my background, thinking "I'm sick of computers" would be just a little too blunt as to my reasons for perhaps wanting to do this.

And I left with a good feeling. Peaceful. Like maybe this is something I need to do. Contrast this with how I went into grad school the first time, full of dread and not really knowing what I was doing or how it would fit into my future. I finally feel like I'm moving forward with my life and that's a really, really good feeling.