So...today. It was such a weird day. I have been in a depressed kind of mood lately. I've been stressing out over the classes I signed up for. Back in May I looked into this master's degree program in professional writing and rhetoric. It's basically a program in technical writing. Technical writing sounded like something I could do. I know some stuff about technology. I know how to write, more or less. A quick search on Monster.com shows that technical writing jobs are plentiful. So that was the plan--to get through this degree program in three semesters. And then to get a "real" job. A professional job, writing VCR manuals or help menus or something like that, possibly in a city other than El Paso.

I applied for the program and was accepted. But it seems like doubts started creeping into my mind from the second I decided to go for it. Three months later, and I'm still not satisfied that this is it, that this is what I should spend thousands of dollars of my own money on, that this is what I should spend hours of my time doing. Rhetoric. The art of writing in a pleasing manner. At the end of the program I would have to write a thesis. The idea of writing a thesis fills me with dread. Actually, the idea of going through more school fills me with dread, too. Writing papers. Spending time researching in the library. MLA style. I do like writing. Writing is probably the one thing I would want to do as a job, and yet, I'm not jumping up and down excited at the prospect of going back to school so I can make myself into a real writer.

In fact, when I looked at my schedule of classes a week ago I just felt tired and like I just wanted to be home and with my family during the week and not stressed and lonely and broke. And so today I dropped two of the classes I was going to take. I am now taking one class. In a way I finally feel relieved and unstressed, but I know this is not going to bode well for the future. I have already told people I was doing this, too, and now it's going to look bad on me, but I really don't care. I'm not about to make the same mistake twice, the mistake of signing up for grad school for a seeming lack of options.

School is easy for me. I love school, in fact. I've always been a good student, doing whatever the teachers told me to do, obedient, following the rules so I could make good grades. I definitely prefer school to the real world. I like being around smart people at school, I like having the freedom to spend time whenever and however I like. But my problem is that I like the idea of being a student more than I actually like studying. I like the hanging out in the Union drinking coffee part of being a student, not so much the spending all night studying for an exam part of it. And I had to ask myself, well, is that why I'm doing this? So I can have an excuse to spend time in the Union drinking coffee? Not really. Well, maybe a little...

And then there's the problem of me being bored and lonely and unsatisfied with my life and thinking that this is the answer. I thought, I'm not going to be bored taking all these classes. In fact I'm going to busier than I've been in a long time. And I'll have classmates to talk to. Finally. People to talk to. But that's not really a reason to do this, not for the amount of money I'm investing in it. I could find ways to be un-bored and ways to meet people that don't involve school. A part of me was like, finally I can have something to give me some validation. Finally I can be busy. Finally I'll have people around who value my opinion. Finally people will think I'm doing something useful with my life. But I guess that's not really a good reason for doing this, either. It's a nice side benefit, but not really a reason in itself.

And I suppose the one real reason to do this, to advance my career prospects, was looking kind of sketchy. This week I kind of freaked out at the commitment I was making to this as a career. What if I end up not liking a career in technical writing? What if I don't want to move out of El Paso and there are basically no jobs here in that field? Then what? It suddenly seemed so tentative and unstable.

So the quest goes on. What do I want to do with my life? Who the hell am I? I had this nice little road map planned out but now here I am just as lost as before. Is writing VCR manuals really what I want to do with my life? Is writing what I want to do with my life? What about the tech-y stuff that I used to like to deal with, what about the science and math that I used to enjoy trying to wrap my mind around? It's like a puzzle I can never figure out. I do still have my job at the paper, which I like and don't really want to give up, which could have a future if I wanted it to. And there are other options that I still entertain from time to time and don't really want to shut the door on until I'm more sure, things like being a scientist or opening my own business or becoming a real journalist.

In the end it was just this feeling of dread and panic washing over me and like I was getting in over my head. I just felt like it was going to be too much. I hate that. I hate having a full load of classes and being pre-occupied with that, then going to work and being tired and unfocused. Then driving home at midnight thinking, I have a paper to write. God, no, please don't let that be me. And it was like, something is wrong. I shouldn't be feeling this way. I should be happy and excited, maybe a few butterflies in the stomach, not this feeling like I'm facing four months of doom and gloom and depression. Maybe I'm overreacting, maybe if I just toughed it out it would have been fine. Or not. I had this same feeling of dread going into grad school last time, this feeling of dread and being lost. Here I am having the same feelings. Have I learned nothing? Life is too damn short to do things that don't make you happy when you don't have to, doing things just to do them, going through the motions. If I don't want to do this, if I'm not going to be going at it 100 percent, then I should quit. Period.