Premeditated Misconduct

So, I checked my bank account today.

GOOD thing I did, too! >.<

OK! Who out in the audience owes me money?
My God, where did it all go? *boggles*
(Ok, besides the 200$ I spend on groceries and the other 200$ on the ferret and that other... *nervous laugh*)

Tsuki! You are still getting money from me, but it'll be lower than I wanted. >.< (Which pisses me right off, more so than imagining the conversation with Tom about this.)

...I feel so shallow.

I was trying to explain it today to my colleagues in my IS151 small group, and became so much more aware of it. Compared to the other people around me, I feel shallow.
I don't have a job; I don't have a mate or a potential mate; I don't have children; I don't have my family nearby; I don't have any friends down here; I don't do anything...besides survival-type living stuff such as shopping and cooking, schoolwork, and lying around reading. I have nothing to converse with people about; I have nothing--right now--really, at all.

I have no more effect on this world than a vagrant breeze does on the ocean... I don't even make a ripple. There is me, and that's all there is in my life. There is no one else. There is nothing else. Just me, and the things I do to amuse myself or provide for myself. If that's not shallow, then I don't know what is.

*sigh* I guess it's not that I'm shallow, just that my life is. Right now, it has all the depth and richness of a mudpuddle. I don't know what to do with myself. I feel motivated when I cannot do anything because of money or time or whatever, and when the constraints are removed I sit and stare at the fucking ceiling, feeling insincere, feeling like a hypocrite. I could be doing volunteer work, instead I'm lying around rereading books I've read a thousand times and fantasizing about dating people when I don't have the courage to even get off my couch.

Lazy, pathetic, cowardly, apathetic, boring, daydreaming, delusional...
Beating myself up? Yeah, I am, you got a fucking problem with it? 'Cause I don't.

How can I attempt to deal with other people when I have such a problem dealing with myself? How can I force myself to get up and get going when it doesn't seem to matter to anyone besides myself that I'm not? No one cares what I do or do not do here... How can I speak to a beautiful woman when I look down at myself and see poorly-dressed, out-of-shape, foul-mouthed, rough-tongued trailor trash? And how do I begin to "correct" my views of myself and of this piss-poor world when my loneliness only seems to enforce them?

...
Julia, one of the members of my small group, invited me over for Thanksgiving. Really, it makes me want to cry, so I'm not thinking too much about it; it's too kind. Still, it's nice to be thought of.
It's funny too, 'cause when Julia and I "met" on the class's online discussion forum, Blackboard, I didn't think there was any way in hell that we'd be able to get along, but...I guess I don't know everything. *laugh*

God, I hate my life. I think I've hated it since I graduated. I hope moving into a new space and getting new roommates will help fix that.


___
Oh, yeah, unrelated. Paul-sensei quote:
"The Catholics could find one good thing to say about the Protestants: they burned Micheal Servetus at the stake."
(Micheal Servetus was a Unitarian Protestant that was martyred in Calvinist Geneva in the 1500's. Look him up; it's interesting.)

If I get everything else in and can't be accepted as a full-time student because of my matriculation interview-- or, if I lose my job because I skipped work to do my matriculation interview-- I'm gonna be ungodly pissed off. My transcripts *should* be waiting for me in the mail at home, I have David's letter, I have time tomorrow to do my writing sample... it's that freakin' interview that's the problem.

(If my transcripts aren't waiting at home, Northland's getting a nasty phone call. I didn't pay fifteen extra dollars to get them by next week.)

I feel a little stressed and wish I had more time to write. I'll go home and babble and bring it in tomorrow probably.

I need to run to catch my bus.

Wow, I actually have time to write a real entry and a working keyboard. All that praying is starting to pay off.


So frustrated.
So fucking frustrated.

I'm tired of this crap. I'm tired of being jobless and spending my days laying around reading books I've already read and watching movies I've already seen and playing solitaire on Tom's computer. I'm tired of searching through the newspapers, hating the grit of newsprint and the smudges of ink on my fingers, circling ads for jobs I'll never get. I'm tired of "applicants must have 3 or more years experience in marketing, communications, or related field."

I'm bored and I want to get out and do stuff, but I can't. I would have something to do if I had a job, but I don't. I canceled two interviews last week because I was so sure of getting the job with Caribou, and now it's been a week and I'm still unemployed.

I want to have something to do. I want to have some reason to get off the couch in the morning. I want to interact, maybe make a friend or two, meet people. I want money so that the budget won't be so tight and so that I can buy a cup of coffee if I want to, or a new pair of headphones, or donate to the Green Party.

And it's so damned easy for me to be irrationally, angrily envious of Tom when he speaks so blithely of the future-- his future and what he wants to do with it.
I don't know what I want to do with the rest of my life. I survive day to day. I breathe, I blink, I eat, I sleep. Instinctive animal rhythms of life that sustain my existence... but there's nothing more. I don't have any goals to strive toward achieving. I have no hopes, no dreams, no desires, no ambitions.
God, I can't even write or draw, though I have plenty of free time in which to do so. All of my projects lie languishing, and I just stare at them, fiddle with the keyboard, and go back to playing solitaire.

How can I hope to attract people-- potential employers, friends, possible mates-- if I lack that divine creative spark, the spiritus of vitality? How beautiful can one possibly be without a future, filled with only avoidance of reality, fear, and despair?

I have only a few ideas of what I don't want to do: I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a high-school graduate dead-end job pushing food in disposable paper packaging across the counter with one hand while the other dances across the keys of the cash register.

I am loss as to where to even begin. I have little money, no local bank account, poor credit, no car, no license, not enough job experience, not enough resume and interview experience. I have my goddamn resume on a disk and I can't get it off; the only way that it appears that I can get the experience I need is through unpaid internship or volunteer work-- and that still leaves me needing a job that pays.

*smashes head into something hard*

Why is this so fucking hard?


So, lacking anything else better to do, I followed Tom's suggestion and went to Pride on Saturday.
(Yeah, as in GAY Pride... it's the third largest Pride festival in the nation, apparently.)

It was neat; I'm glad that I went, though I did spend most of the day thinking, "Oh wow! I bet Daysha would love that!" Or, "Heh, I wish Angela could have seen that... she'd have had something nice to say." Or, "Oh, I wish I could buy that for Annie!" It's kind of like being haunted.

(That reminds me though: Annie, you should come down here for Pagan Pride on September 11th!)

I was just about to leave when I ran into Alicia and Lindsey, Sara Lee and Connie.
I glomped poor Alicia...I don't think she was expecting quite that enthusiastic of a greeting...and spent about another two hours hanging out with them. Yeah, I felt like a bit of a fifth wheel, being the only individual in a group of two couples, but I didn't care, it was just so good to be with people.
I found out that Channy lives down here too, and that she occasionally does drag at the Gay 90's. Maybe I'll stop in there some night and see if she's preforming.

...

I don't know. I mean, it's hard to explain when I run into people-- like Alicia-- why I'm so desperately happy to see them. Yeah, I guess that I am lonely. I'm also bored. I am also stressed. My joblessness, which can be summed up with, "And I still don't have a job!", is grating on me-- the pressure to get one, the tight budget, the overwhelming sense that I'm fucking up and being a leech and that I'm letting Tom down and all I do is sit around and read and listen to music and why aren't I trying HARDER WHY DON'T I GODDAMN HAVE A JOB YET WHAT ARE YOU SOME KIND OF WELFARE LOSER!?
*pants*
Thinking about it makes me feel a little psychotic. I'm contemplating more and more of scheduling an appointment with Tom's shrink, who charges on a sliding scale according to income...not that it would do me any good; I can't afford the drugs he'd probably prescribe.

Yeah, Jess's screws aren't as in as tight as they could be.

It's problematic, but at least I'm aware of it. That's half the fight right there. Maybe it's time to start using what little I have left of my St. John's Wort tincture again, or talk to Deborah-- a very nice friend of Tom's-- who I believe is an herbalist.

It's not that bad-- not as bad as it sounds. I'm just frustrated and upset and tired of having to scratch for everything. A lot of this will go away once I start working-- are you listening, God?-- and don't have to deal with these feelings of inadequacy. I just need something to do with my time and distract me, and then I'll be OK.

God, I don't want to end it on this kind of note. I don't want anyone worrying about me. I just needed to vent a bit, purge the abcess. It looks ugly now, but it's not as bad as it appears.

Right.

My room is a pit; there are books, clothes, cups, wrappers, and miscellaneous other things strewn haphazardly everywhere. It's Tuesday night of the week of graduation, and I haven't packed anything up since Wednesday of last week-- I haven't even picked up more boxes yet. I have an eight-to-ten page research paper due on Friday for my last class at Northland, and I have only conducted one and a half (if I can even count that half) out of the six or so interviews that I need in order to write it... And that's saying that even if I do the interviews I'll write the damned thing. I've done nothing except write fanfiction and sleep in the last week-- a hardcore program of absolute avoidance.

A walk to buy ice cream in the campus center took over 45 minutes-- I flopped on the sidewalk, watched the storm clouds, got the ice cream, wandered around campus until I got the the fire ring, I saw a deer and decided to see how close I could get before it ran... Some sewing that should have taken two hours was started at noon and is still unfinished. I really don't even want to be around other people-- and that's bad, 'cause I'll miss them a great deal in another week, and I know that they want to hang out with me while they can-- just hang out in the swirling maelstrom of my disaster area, communing with my computer.

It's Tuesday night of the week of graduation, and the lilacs aren't blooming yet. I'll probably have to wear a sweater to my graduation; it's been raining almost nonstop for three weeks, and it's not predicted to stop until after I've left. No sunbathing on what's left of the Mall for me. Too cold, too wet.

I'm bored and don't want to do anything. I skip class to sleep in until the afternoon and I'm still tired. If the seminary doesn't accept me, I have no long-term plans.

What in the hell am I doing?

Just got back from church.

( On Unitarian Universalists, weepy psychology professors, change, death, and rebirth. )

Maybe I'm just feeling better by daylight. Maybe it's the large amounts of cold medicine I consumed earlier with the liquid sugar I call tea. Maybe the pseudo-Christian part of my mind tripped over and has convinced me that today is a day of second chances. God only knows.

I still don't feel like writing that history paper. I feel like crashing somewhere and watching Saiyuki and Chobits until my brain explodes... maybe even while getting my Christian Thought homework done.
I have to remember that I have to call that woman who's giving me a ride to the Cities on Tuesdayish, and to check with Daysha before then to see if she can take me over to Duluth for Sunday. I also have to remember to maybe study a bit for finals, find a place to dump the rats for two weeks, and pack up for Tom's.
Ahh, Tom's. Where I plan on sitting on my ass studying astrology and Japanese for a full week, and life will be good.

( Damn, I'm a pervert! Heh... )

Geeezz... I can't believe it's the end of the semester already! Where did the time go? (Oh... into my capstone. Nevermind.)
Eee... I'm afraid to graduate. The rhythm of the last five years-- a time period which I have mostly enjoyed-- is over, and I worry that the best time of my life is drawing to a close. What if I don't get into seminary school; what if I'm stuck working a crappy blue-collar job (can we say Wal*Mart) for the rest of my life? What if everything goes wrong? What if I spend my entirely life living in this country, and never am able to afford to leave it?

What do I do if I feel myself sliding down the vortex into the sucking swamp of American lower-class mediocrity: drowning in bills and work that consists of stocking shelves until my back aches constantly; dreaming "of getting out, of getting anywhere," but stuck in second gear with the engine overheating until the damn thing explodes from the strain?

Horror of horrors, what if I end up like my mother?

I know that's not a rational train of thought. I'm stronger, smarter, more stubborn, more resourceful than my mother. I know that I can accomplish more...that I deserve better, and that I will see that I do what I want to do, even if it means fighting against the odds for years.

If I don't get into seminary right away, I can still take classes there and bring my GPA up until they let me in full-time. I can always move to Canada. I can always write for newspapers or magazines, selling free-lance to other publications. I have marketable skills. I'm not helpless.

I'm just afraid, and worse-case scenarios are the easiest to envision.

I have plenty to look forward to: hanging out with Tom (who no doubt will be the first to take me to a gay bar); living in an urban area and the pleasures that go with that; seminary classes; joining one of the Cities UU fellowships; having my bachelor's degree; maybe visiting Scout, a rat-breeder friend who lives in St. Paul, or even visiting/helping O.J. again, who owns the wolf pack at WolfWoods.

Mmmm... being stomped into the dirt by a trio of happy, 120-pound arctic wolves. ^.^ Life doesn't get any better than that!