So...very early Sunday morning. It rained like crazy earlier. Poured. The day started off dry, I even rinsed off my car a little with the hose, not knowing that the rain would wash away all the dirt a couple of hours later. Then the skies opened up. There was plenty of thunder. I forgot about thunder and how loud and angry-sounding it can be.

I stayed in bed, reading Harry Potter and Madam Secretary and listening to U2 for the millionth time. Yahweh, take this heart and make it rain. That song kills me, it is just so perfect.

Confidence crisis. I feel like I've stayed at home so long I can't see myself anywhere else. I'm trying to remember the times I've felt most vital. One of those times was senior year of college, software engineering project. I was so busy with that project nothing else mattered. I spent quality time with the team, so much time we became like family. I had a purpose, which was to finish that project. I was busy and I was happy. Don't even know if all that time was worth anything. But I felt useful, vital. I felt part of something, the team, I felt like I was making a difference. I kind of felt that way as a TA, too. Like I was actually helping kids learn, the prof I was working with respected me. Except for that one horrible experience it wasn't too bad. Once again felt like my life had some kind of purpose.

Now it's like, spend another hour or two in bed, who cares? I'm just wasting my life. I'm sort of employed, not like I'm getting nothing accomplished at all, I have a job that I like OK, but really, it's not really what I envision for my life, spending 12 hours a day in bed, watching more TV than I should, not really interacting with anyone, briefly going to work but not really getting anything done. Not even really writing anymore. Sometimes I wish I were busy, busy the way I was with that project, so busy I didn't even have time time to contemplate the meaning of what I was doing, whether it was worthwhile or not. Kind of the way high school was, you don't really contemplate it, you just go every single day, whether you like it or not, it fills up the majority of your time. Work for the sake of work. Maybe that's kind of ridiculous, but I guess I just need to figure out what would be worth spending that much time and energy on and then find some project to lose myself in.

It is now Friday. Yesterday was the kind of day I love and I had such a good time that it makes me sad because I know I probably won't have another one like it for a long time. Sitting on the roof watching the sun set over the mountains. Going to Wal-Mart at 11 p.m. to buy a Bratz notebook and a vanilla frappuccino. Watching House Hunters with Mom. It was all just too good, this is what a family is. I miss that when it's gone, when it's just me or me and my mom, and she comes home from work tired and the sun sets early and I have to go to work and then come home to an empty house. I know we will soon return to those days and thinking about it makes me sad.

I've been debating the future. My grad school app is on its way. What the hell am I doing? I don't know. I was all psyched up to do it a month ago, now I find myself waffling. What do I really want to do with the rest of my life? I don't know. Am I limiting myself too much? Am I getting a useless degree? Part of me wants to do the following: work full-time hours, either get another job or find a full-time job and move out of the house into my own place. Just to say I'm on my own. Let things stabilize, get some work experience, have some independence. Tech writing seems like a fine field to get into, but two more years in school is a lot. Or maybe I should just not work and focus on that, try to get out as fast as possible. Then off to work. Work, work, work. Jobs are imperfect things. What is it that I really want to do? Part of me wants to be crazy and be like f*** that, let me just be totally impractical and study useless things like music and Italian and poetry and then work a dummy job and travel around the world. Then come home broke and happy. Sounds like fun. Part of me wants to write 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. I am turning into such a slacker, totally impractical, totally clueless about all things career-oriented.

So it's Thursday. Better day today, got an e-mail from Stu of Feeling Listless. Apparently he wants to go ahead with that interview I proposed a few months ago. I had been thinking about it, was even getting ready to start writing down questions, and then I get this e-mail, which is cool. But now I'm like, I'd better not mess this up, because this is a pretty big thing, a five-year anniversary. But it's pretty cool, it's something I came up with and it was a big risk for me to ask and now it's coming to fruition.

Anyway, so I spent the rest of the day doing not much of anything, I cleaned the bathroom, returned my library book, played Scrabble with Mom. I don't know, I think I just need to start focusing on the good aspects of my life rather than feeling like every day is a failure, every day I am a failure because of what I lack. To be at least somewhat satisfied with how my life is going, I would say 80 percent satisfied, 20 percent unsatisfied and looking to make things better. Because how important is what you do anyway, how important is a job title and how you are regarded by other people, more important is your relationship with God, treating other people well, having self-respect and integrity and serving others rather than being a jerk. That can be done in any circumstances, no matter what job you have.

Maybe I was deflated by the job interview yesterday, but like I said I didn't deserve the job. And maybe it's God's will. I prayed, God show me your will, and then all that happened and I was humiliated but maybe that is God shutting the door. Why can't I just be honest, that I want to make a career change. Shut the door on what's past and focus on making a fresh start having learned from my mistakes.

Feeling pretty low right now. Went to the interview, the guy who interviewed me was completely rude. Glanced at my resume, quickly pointed out all the deficiencies. Halfway through I was just like, I'm sunk, I quit trying to sell myself and just gave up. I have been here before, and it's like I just need to stop kidding myself. Am I just unhireable? Yes. My resume is a mess, my life is a mess, I've made some poor decisions and now it's time to own up to them. Start over fresh, quit being a lazy ass. Take something seriously for a change. I don't deserve to get hired. I really don't. If I were to get hired it would be a lucky accident.

I hate people, I hate computers, and I hate the world right now. I hate working at a job where I have to come home late every single night and get paid not enough to drive home surrounded by drunk drivers and work every holiday. I hate jobs, why must we have them, why can't we all play at the beach all day and have no worries? I hate jerks who are quick to point out your deficiencies and criticize your life decisions. I hate everyone, I hate myself for being a big jerk who can't make decisions who wallows in mediocrity.

I just feel like the biggest loser right now. Don't make much money, I'm semi-employed, right now I'm mostly a bum who watches TV and sleeps all day. I don't have any friends. I eat too much. I pretend to be religious but I'm really not. I've wasted the past two years of my life doing something that was a mistake that has not profited me in any way whatsoever. Right now I want to curl up and hide and never talk to anyone ever again. There's one solution to all my problems.

I hate the past two years and myself and everyone who made it two of the worst years of my life and discouraged me. I hate myself for going to grad school, I hate myself for being lazy and not thinking of the future and being a poser. I hate everyone for being better than me.

The Fourth of July. I spent the evening at work and missed all the fireworks. Oh well, that's life, not like I was really going to go to one of those fireworks displays even if I had the opportunity. I probably would have stayed home and watched TV. Again.

I got a job interview tomorrow. What am I thinking? I don't really know what to do at this point. I'm in a weird situation right now, kind of between careers or something, it's hard to know which thing to pursue. And there's money to think about and desirable hours to work, and I don't know how much those things should factor into my job decisions.

Anyway, I've spent the past day or so going over some computer textbooks. Ah, the good old days. Reminds me of school. But I had this feeling of doing something useful, of testing if my brain can actually still function and hasn't congealed in the months I haven't been in school. And it felt really good to be busy. Busy, busy, busy, no time to watch TV or mope or think about how completely horrible my life is. Busy is good.

Boring, boring Saturday. Got to go to work at 7, hope it's not too much traffic with the Downtown Street Festival going on two streets away.

I am feeling pathetic. I think about how many hours a day I spend in bed and it is too many. Eight hours sleeping. One hour to nap. One hour to read before bed. Ten hours. I'm spending roughly half my life in bed. I guess I just have too much time on my hands. I should be doing something, be out working or volunteering or exercising or something but it all just seems pretty pointless. What have I done this year that's worthwhile? What have I done in the past two years that's worthwhile?

Loneliness never ends. Moments of connection are few and far between. I need to be busy so I won't have to dwell on it.

I don't know how to change and I don't even know what I want to change into. I had this idea yesterday that for a goal I should set aside 20-30 minutes of "quiet time" per day for spiritual health. From that everything else will fall into place.

It's just weird how you get caught up into the same old patterns of thought, day after day. Lately it's just these depressing thoughts. Anne Lamott calls it KF**KED radio playing in your head. Yeah, I know that station.

I was watching the World Cup again, even though I think it's boring, and I realized that, hey, I actually remember the rules of soccer. How do I know the rules? Years of physical education in school where every single year we reviewed the rules and sometimes had to take tests on them. Now that I look back on that, it just seems so trivial that that was one of the things we had to learn to be educated citizens, the rules of sports. And we reviewed them so many times I now find it pretty ridiculous. I went over the rules of soccer more often than I went over other more important things like world history or geography. It's odd how certain arbitrary things are prioritized in a person's education and others are ignored.