All right then. Thursday night, don't really feel like writing for the real blog. It was around 8:00 when I started to feel nervous, palms got all sweaty, and I was like, how am I going to do this? Work and school, school and work, driving all around town, being judged and graded. But this is life, it's the reality, how am I going to get anywhere unless I push myself a little more. But it's just like this mountain of anxiety came over me. I should think about the positive aspects of it, like here is something I am genuinely interested in learning more about. I'm bored out of my skull now, anyway, I've been complaining about that for months. I guess I just wish I didn't have to work but that's not going to happen. And I guess it is just hard not having someone I could just talk to about all this, confess all my anxieties to, say I'm scared out of my mind. This is my entire future we're talking about here, I mean, it's the difference between working at a job I don't like and one that I do, or something like that, it's about having a huge regret if I don't do this and wondering what could have been.

And I can just sense it is going to be like last year, basically going through things all alone. Mom is busy all the time, my sister is going back to school, and I am going to be out of the house a lot, alone during the day, and what if it is just a recipe for misery? I'm spending crazy amounts of money, I'm still afraid of driving, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do when I get out, or even if I'm going to like the jobs that will be available when I get out. It's all very chaotic, and I feel like I don't know what I'm doing at all, based on previous experiences I'm not very good at steering my own life.

Whatever, I'm sure it will be hard adjusting but I will probably be OK once I get used to it. And I can probably use my bad experiences to know what not to do, to know the things I should do to set myself up for success instead of failure.

I walked up the mountain again today and it was like, wow, I'm actually doing something on my own here, I'm going into new territory, I've managed to pry myself off the couch. It was so worth it, too, I stood at the top of this one hill and looked down on the valley and it was so beautiful. There was this large pond of water in the desert landscape that I hadn't even noticed, mountains behind me and in the distance, clouds with the sunlight rimming them, a plane with a contrail that you could see dissolving right into a cloud. It was so quiet, you couldn't even hear the cars in the background. Dragonflies flying all over. It was so peaceful. Sometimes I just feel like I never get any peace. TV or radio is always on, the AC, people talking, cars passing by, and here it was so quiet, and you see the mountains and nature and you're just like, the mountains are here and they will be here long after you die, long after everyone you know has died, and suddenly things don't seem to matter as much as you thought they did. I went up there in a mopey mood, thinking that I would probably spend a few minutes crying because of all the anxiety I had about stuff, and then I get up there and I feel better, at peace. It was very nice.

I guess I'm just hoping that I'm not about to plunge into a huge bout of depression. It's like I have this carefully constructed life that I can handle, and if anything disrupts that I might go off the deep end. Part-time job that I've already mastered, rest of the time I am at home with family, able to do what I want, go where I please, watch 10 hours of TV if I feel like it. Very little stress involved, although it's always like the anxieties you have have a way of expanding to fit a situation, like now sometimes I am even afraid to leave the house. But I am going to be putting more pressure on myself, and why, is it because I am bored, is it because I feel like I need to prove myself to others? Are my motives pure? By taking these classes am I going to be getting where I want to be? I honestly don't know.

Anderson Cooper was on Oprah today- he said his mother's advice was to "Follow your bliss." And my bliss has pretty much always been writing. Is that what I should do, then? It's not like I want to write the Great American Novel. Or be a reporter. I don't know, I guess features or technical writing or nonfiction or something. But sometimes I just want things to be really, really simple, the way my job is now, kind of, or to have a basic programming job, where things are very black and white, and you don't have to think very hard and don't have to be judged, just go to a job and earn money, come home and watch TV, take a vacation once a year. And that's it, nothing fancy about it, purely a financial transaction. But I think after a year or so of that existence I'd find it unfulfilling and want something more. Want to make a difference, want to do something difficult that's more in line with my true abilities and not something that just anyone could do.

I don't know, I guess these are just things you figure out along the way. What the next steps are. Sometimes you just have to take a step, even if it's wrong. I like to think of it as climbing a staircase, you take one step up, eventually you get to a landing, a place of stability. And then you move on again. Hopefully this is one step closer to the life I want to have.