Thursday, March 09, 2006

What Am I Supposed to be Doing?

I don't know what to do with my life. In two months and ten days I turn twenty-five. I feel like I should be doing more with my life. I don't mean like all that cool stuff some people have done by my age, like setting records or earning billions of dollars or anything like that. I don't have a job, or a major, or a girlfriend, or anyone I would think is close enough emotionally to call a friend. I'm not even sure what I want to do with my life, but I feel like I should do something soon or I'm going to be in major trouble. Minimum wage won't even get me an apartment in this town. Not if I want to eat.

I don't think I even feel driven to do anything. Not driven driven. I feel like I need to do this stuff, but apart from that I'm not really motivated to do any of it, and that disturbs me. But to think about it, is it that I'm not motivated to do anything, or am I motivated not to do anything?

I'm inclined to think I have a social phobia, a fear of interacting with people because they will react or judge me harshly. What's difficult with this phobia is that it's hard to cure. With most phobias, they can be cured with relaxation techniques and exposure to the frightening stimuli. With social phobias, one's fear becomes a self-fulling prophecy. With fear of social interaction comes the need to avoid it, and with avoiding it comes a lack of social experience, which only serves to make social interactions more frightening. To overcome social phobias, one must be trained in the art of sociability as well as relaxation in order to confront the fear and extinguish the phobia.

What bothers me is that I don't think anyone will take this seriously, and I don't have the temmerity to convince them to help me. I once told my dad that I thought I was depressed, and he tells me that I'm just feeling a little down. To my recollection, he didn't even bother to ask about why I thought I was depressed. He just assured me that everyone feels a little down sometimes. The phrase that comes to mind is "Fuck that." Yeah, people feel a little down sometimes, but there's usually a reason for it. Maybe they're down because they're depressed, and then you have to figure out why they're depressed. Sure, sometimes you can ignore it and it'll go away, but the probability of a mental problem going away by itself without treatment is only 30%.

You need to at least talk about the problem, get to the root of the dilemma, and figure out a solution. This will not be a quick and easy process. This is going to take time and experimentation. At this point and time, I feel too overwhelmed by my psychosis to willingly stray from my pattern by very much. But if I don't, I'll miss out on everything, and I've missed out on a lot of stuff already. Lost time and memories that I'll never have back. So much to do, so little time.

A this point in time, I'd like to point out that there's this girl.

SHUT UP!

The girl is not the source of the problem by a long shot. She is only an irritant that exacerbates my social allergy. If she wasn't there, I'd still be having this problem, but I think it's less likely I'd be making this post right now. Without her, it would just be an anxiety about not having a job or purpose. Now it's about not having a girlfriend, too.

I don't know how she feels about me. I haven't so much as talked with her. Hell, I'm not sure how I feel about her. All I know is that I'm a moment of utter desperation away from stalking her. Heh. Even I think that sounds funny, but I'm serious here. I'm trying to figure out how to get close to her without looking like a stalker, and I may already be failing. She's in a class I have, and I've started migrating across the room to one day sit near where she usually sits.

There are two problems with that: One, this will get me no information about her whatsoever, and, two, she's usually one of the last people in class. Depending on where everyone else is sitting by the time she gets there, she'll either be way in back or way up front. I'd have to guess in order to just happen to sit near here, since I'm one of the first people to arrive in class. I could show up late, but that's not my style. I could move after she sits down, but then people would notice.

I don't know if she has a web page or blog or myspace account or what. I do, however, have her e-mail address. Then again, I have the e-mail address of everyone else in my class since the teacher specifically asked for them (and our phone numbers) and then distrubited a list so we could contact each other if we miss a day or two and need to catch up. The thought occurred to contact her over the 'net and make her a cyberpen-pal in order to establish a casually relationship with her that I think I could easily deal with. Again, however, I'm not sure how to start such a thing without sounding obsessed or desperate or a complete putz.

A good plan could be to cut out all this crap and just ask her out. Again, we run into problems. Aside from the fact that she may be at least dating someone else already, and I wouldn't be too surprised, I'm not sure what to say. Or not to say. Or shut up. Sure I could walk up and ask, "Hey, if you're not busy this weekend, how about a movie?" but I've got a bad feeling I won't stop there. Sometimes when I speak, I feel the need to explain myself, which I never do well. The above question could easily become, "Hey, if you're not busy this weekend, how about a movie? You know, with me. I mean, I don't know if there's anything you'd want to see, or even if you like movies or anything, but, uh... yeah." And I'd probably warn her that I don't have a lot of money or a job or anything. Yeah, way to advertise yourself, fantasy me. For that matter, way to fantisize about yourself, real me. Think I could make a more obvious comment? "I don't know if you even like movies." Yeah, that's what you find out by asking, dumbass. And you don't tell her you don't have a job. No one needs to know that. If you want to make some kind of spiritual connection, you can't let a flaw like that get in the way. It might not make you look to appealing right off, but if she comes to like you enough it might not matter that much. Of course, you still need a job. Can't really live in this town without one.

Have I run out of things to say yet? I guess so.

Oh, yeah. I finally got the pictures from Hallowe'en developed. Last year I said I was going to include a picture of me in my costume, so here it is. I guess I'll leave this up instead of a quiz result.