I've tried to write in here for a couple of days, but every time I wrote something it was so personal and so scary that I would just stop and not post the resulting self-pitying screed.

Long story short, here's where I am.

1.) I am getting very burnt out at school. The past three semesters or so I have been a really hard-charger, getting all "A"s except for in math. And when it looked like I wasn't getting an A I would seriously bum out. Right now I have three difficult classes: Math 114, which is the second half of beginning Algebra; Biology 3 which is Bio+Lab for non-Biology majors; and English 103, which is English Composition and Critical Thinking. I am looking quite seriously at the prospect that I will not do as well on these classes as I have in the past, not only because they are difficult classes and in one case a difficult teacher, I know I have said this before but I really mean it this time. I might wind up with two Bs and a C if I'm not careful. Maybe all Cs. I don't know if I have the energy to pull these grades up. I know in the case of the Math my problems with taking Math tests have actually gotten worse instead of better...the anxiety surrounding taking tests really is crippling me.

2.) I am now not so sure that I want to go to Woodbury, because it's going to mean tons and tons of debt. I don't think that I can get into Cal State Northridge, and the UC system (as in UCLA) is inaccessible because of my lack of Foreign Language. So it is quite likely that if the financial aid package from Woodbury sucks as badly as I think it will, and I decide to not go on the hook for all the debt I will likely incur, I will be out of school for a while as I try to figure out what to do next. This is also why I changed the subtitle of my blog, because while I am still intent on reinventing myself, I don't know whether becoming a school counselor is in the cards for me.

3.) If I don't go back to school in Fall I suspect I'm going to have to get a J-O-B. With the gap in employment and the fact that I haven't been employed in my core competencies since 2000 I will probably only be able to get a "Mc Job" somewhere for minimum wage. Although minimum wage in California is not as bad as it is elsewhere in the US, it's still pretty damn sucky. $6.50/hr. Trade in your hours for a handful of dimes indeed.

4.) Life in the US is getting uglier and uglier with each passing day. The "Debt Peonage" Bankruptcy Bill is one of the reasons why I have been thinking twice about getting more indebted. The Senate passed it, it's now coming up in the House, and has a good chance of passing there. And you can bet that George W. Bush is going to sign it faster than a Texas Sidewinder catching a mouse. It's been two years of playing in the sand in Iraq and the boys and girls are still coming home in pine boxes. Nobody is talking anymore about the fishiness of the last Presidential election. Nobody is talking anymore about the fishiness of Election 2000. Nobody is talking about why it seems only Christian denominations get grants now under this "faith based" initiative thingy, and why Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists and Neo-Pagans are not. Nobody is talking about the fact that USA-PATRIOT is catching innocent people in its net while alQaeda still operates openly in many parts of the world. Robert Anton Wilson once said that if you face the world with more optimism every day, it's a sign you are getting more intelligent, while if you face the world with more pessimism every day it's a sign you are getting more stupid. Well then, I suppose I am getting more stupid, because it's looking pretty damn screwed up now. Someone pointed me to this footage through the DailyKOS, and if you have RealPlayer you would do well to check it out. Standard suggestions about alternative players like RealAlternative under Windows. Unfortunately the open-source Helix Player (By Real) won't play it...sigh...

"The biggest threat to America is that we are moving towards a Fascist Theocracy."
-- Frank Zappa, on CNN Crossfire. March 1986

Here we are, a little shy of 20 years since Zappa made that prediction, and he's 100% right on the money. He died before he could see it come to fruition, but I'm sure if he's in some afterlife he's alternately weeping for us US Citizens and enraged that George W. Bush took the direction he could see Ronald Reagan taking the US in and accelerated it over the cliff. If that clip interests you, I suggest you take a look at Zappa's facilitated autobiography The Real Frank Zappa Book (an unsponsored Powells.Com link) and read what he has to say about music, politics, censorship and his own legend, the latter of which he enjoyed poking holes in at every opportunity.

Anyway, to bring it back to where my head is at now, things are pretty damn bleak, and getting bleaker. I have to be honest...I have thought of ending it all. However, I can't follow through with it, and here's why:

1.) I am not alone on this planet. There are people who would actually miss me, amazingly enough, and even though I suspect they all would be able to get over it and get on with their lives eventually, I shouldn't inflict cleaning up after the mess I'd no doubt leave as a suicide on them.

2.) There's a person out there in Cyberspace, she knows who she is, for whom I don't want to model suicide as an acceptable solution to one's problems. I care deeply about her, she's a young adult now and is making a life for herself. I don't want to go into anything more but I don't want to give her the message that suicide is acceptable. It isn't. It sucks.

Like Hamlet, I can't do away with myself, but for different reasons. He feared punishment in the Afterlife by an Angry Father God. I fear hurting people by the act. I can't say I believe in an afterlife in any way shape or form, just like I can't say I believe in any sort of higher power above and beyond myself in anything other than a metaphorical sense.

I don't know what direction I'm going to go. I'm stuck. I want to continue my education but I'm not sure how I'm going to do it without owing my soul to ed.gov for the rest of my life. And the "real world" outside Academia is very, very grim indeed.

Help...