It's 12:30 on Thursday morning. It has been kind of a frustrating day. I was thinking I was going to work and I really wanted to work, in fact, since I'm so bored. Then my co-worker calls me, says he's going to work instead. Who decided this? I guess I just am a little peeved that I don't get any input into the decision, like he's calling the shots here and I feel like I'm losing some of my credibility at work. I mean, not like it matters so much given the job I have, but still, it just peeved me. I guess I'm just tired of being bored.

So instead I went to church and watched the Suns-Spurs game. Which was cool. I have missed going to church and the game was really, really good.

It's disorienting to be so bored. Sometimes I just feel like I get so used to being at home that I forget how to do things on my own. Driving starts to freak me out, I forget how to talk around other people. I stop thinking about the outside world, all I think about is stupid stuff like, what's for dinner and how can I get better at playing the piano? I start analyzing myself and my life and it is not a good thing.

Sometimes I just feel so useless. Sometimes I feel like I have thrown it all away in my life. I have a good enough education and I'm still in school. I'm not putting it to good use. I had the opportunity to get this job and somehow it slipped through my fingers. Why? I don't know. It's weird, like getting it would have been a validation for me. And not getting it is saying, well, you're not good enough.

I'm sad, I'm practically crying right now. I hate to see things change. I really do. I hate the fact that I am not going to be at my current job forever. I hate that I don't know what I want to do with my life. I hate that I have so few friends, so few people to talk to. I hate that I don't really have a career. And it's really hard to make myself change.

Is it difficult for everybody to find and keep jobs? My sis is having a hard time of it. And she's more of a career woman than I am. Sometimes I see my current job as just this bizarre accident, the job I wasn't supposed to have, that I shouldn't have taken but I did anyway. And in a way I love my job, but in a way I guess it wrecked some other things I had going on in my life at the time.

Sometimes I look back and think that I've spent years being angry and insecure and above all lonely. Like I haven't wanted to be a part of the world at all, I just wanted to say "screw you, world" and do my own thing. So I did, to an extent. But I guess I don't feel the same way now. I'm tired of being lonely. I'm tired of not having a stable career, not having a five-year plan. I'm tired of living at my mother's house and pretending it's independent living. It's weird, how do I explain to people that for the entire years of 2004 and 2005 I had no friends, I didn't make any connections in grad school, I didn't make any useful career progress? I just did nothing except turn into this insecure mess.

Maybe I look back at this now and think that maybe it has been a spiritual problem all along, not being centered, being insecure and using the wrong things to cope. For years I've been using food to cope. And then sometimes blogs in lieu of friends. Really. Some people have TV soaps, I had blogs. But I think I don't rely on those two things the way I used to, though I still overeat sometimes and I still like to read blogs.

And I guess I just realize that I shouldn't do that anymore, that I have to be more mature than all that, grow up. Try to make some real emotional connections, or even intellectual connections. Decide on a career and make a real effort to prepare for it. Quit being fat and overweight.

I just really want to get out of this funk. I want to be busy, busy enough to the point that I don't have time to contemplate my life and whatever failings have come in the past. Where I work hard and make my own living, where endless days off are a thing of the past, or something to look forward to rather than to dread. Right now I feel like I am trapped in the mode of a child. Like I want to be independent but it's just not happening. I'm still in school and it's costing me a pretty penny but hopefully I will graduate and be able to do something I really want to do and can deal with. My social life still leaves something to be desired but it's still better than it has been in the past where I was just a total mess and angry at the world and clueless about how to deal with anything.

Maybe I just need to be more disciplined about things. I guess I always think, well, there's no reason I can't get a real job. There's no reason for me to still be in school. There's no reason I can't be independent. Maybe getting another master's degree is impractical or a luxury more than anything else. But I guess looked at another way it's a good investment. I mean, I have the whole rest of my life to work. What other time would it have been possible to drop everything and take classes I've wanted to take for years, classes about writing and about literature? I see it as an investment in my life and my personal development. Also, given that I like the subject matter and am a reasonably good writer, when I finish I can turn that into a job teaching or doing some form of writing. Would it be so bad to have a job teaching people how to write? It seems like a cool thing. But then I get cold feet about turning my back on everything else and committing to this. What about my budding journalism career? What about cashing in on my experience and connections at the newspaper? And then there's my education in CS. I mean, I have that knowledge, it's extremely marketable, and I do still like working with technical things. I always feel like if I just put in a little time with that then I could have some really in-demand job skills and earn a really good living. I'm really going to just ditch all that and go with this instead? I guess I just have this fear of commitment, like I'm going to do it and it's all going to blow up in my face. I'm going to finish my master's and be, like, is this it? Is this what I'm going to end up doing for the rest of my life? What if I don't like it? But the truth is, if I don't then I could conceivably go back to one of those other things, if I am thoroughly convinced that I really want to do that thing. Maybe I should think of this as more of a process of elimination. If I decide I really don't like teaching, I'd rather do something else, then I will do that other thing and just go for it full throttle.

But right now I guess I feel like I have faltered, I have done the immature thing and done things just cuz I felt like doing them rather than thinking long-term. Something's not making me 100 percent happy, so I am going to try something else. While still doing the other thing. I guess what I really should have is the master plan. Like try to come up with an actual answer to what do you see yourself doing five years from now. Be serious about pursuing some type of career. I guess I have always had this attitude of being a dilettante, dabbling in jobs not really settling down into anything, not thinking, well, I'll do this as a stepping stone to something else. Doing things blindly, I guess. Also, figuring out more than a job, but what kind of lifestyle do I want to have? No free time, always at work? Or the relatively much slower pace of academia? It seems like the newspaper and the university are two opposite extremes. Maybe I should just admit to myself that I have gotten used to and that I now like long vacations and flexible schedules. That I'm more of a morning person than a night owl. On the other hand, why do I like the paper then? B/c it's fast-paced, b/c it affects a lot of people, b/c I like the people I work with. It's exciting, more exciting in my eyes than being "just another teacher." On the other hand (three hands?) I don't like corporate politics at all, I want to have reassurance that I'm going to have a job from one year to the next. And teaching is pretty rewarding. Corporate jobs revolve around making money and maybe that's not the way I like to think about things. In some ways corporate jobs can be more boring, since at least in teaching you have new students every year.

I've never really liked the idea of being locked into a profession, though. Like if you get a medical degree, then being a doctor pretty much all you can do. Or if you get a Ph.D., same deal. You're stuck trying to be a professor. So maybe it's better this way, like there's some flexibility. But then you're maybe not going to have as much influence.

I don't know, this is probably not ever going to be completely resolved. Maybe sometimes you have to go with your feelings, with what excites you, but sometimes you have to make decisions based on rationality. And I feel like I've done both. Getting a CS degree, the ultimate in rationality. Going to work at the paper, the ultimate in irrationality.

This has helped resolve my glumness a tiny bit. I don't feel like crying anymore. Still feeling sad, though, just because. Because things are changing again. How much does this have to do with my sister not being here anymore? And because my work situation is changing? And I'm bored and feeling useless and re-evaluating my life decisions? But it's all going to be OK, right?