Anyway, today was slow at work again. I didn't wake up early enough to have oatmeal and walk to work, so I ended up having to jog part of the way while carrying my oatmeal bowl. Well, that's how it goes. My left knee has become swollen under the kneecap because I haven't run in a long time.

Even though we got rid of... 4 people and the remaining 5 now have to take on their duties, we still get the coach done in about the same time and end up standing around for a few hours trying to find something to do. It sucks. I started getting depressed and being less motivated about the things in my previous blog entry.

Jeff told me of a secret back entrance to my apartment complex that I never knew about and it lets me walk or jog to work while avoiding the highway. That's cool. Apparently he used to live there. I didn't know that. I walked to his house with him and he drove me to the secret entrance so I knew how to get to it from the outside. I came home and Laura was going to make lasagna and needed me to go to the store to get some ingredients.

I was still depressed and didn't know why. I started talking to her about what was on my mind and it just went from there. It first started at work when I was bored and started thinking about cleaning up my apartment when I got home. I really didn't want to, but kept telling myself that I want a clean apartment and was tired of living like a slob. Anytime I thought of putting it off or spreading it out over a few days, I would tell myself that if any of my other friends came home and their apartment looked like that, they wouldn't be able to stand it and would want to clean it up as soon as possible. Why couldn't I be like that? I should be like that. I don't want a messy apartment, so why don't I have a sudden urge to clean it up without having to tell myself that I need to? Why doesn't it automatically seem worth the work to have a clean apartment? It's worth the work to other people. It's worth it to responsible people. Why can't it be for me?

Then I got to thinking about college. I want and need to go to college. I need a better job. I need to do something with my life and it starts there. I know this. But at the time, no job seemed worth going to college for. No job I could think of seemed interesting or that I'd enjoy. What would I be going to college for, then? My motivation really started falling because nothing I was trying to work for from my last diary entry seemed worth reaching. I just feel like a loser with no ambition. No goals in life. Nothing to work toward.

I was telling Laura that you see this handsome guy driving a nice car or even motorcycle on a sunny day, probably in southern California or something, with stylish clothes and nice teeth and everything about him says "successful". You can bet his house looks nice and isn't messy one bit. That guy worked for what he has and that guy would want to work at cleaning up his place if it was messy. That's what I wanted to be. But some things I only feel like I want to do them because they appear nice to other people and it's hard to be motivated to do things like that for me. I've always wanted to be like that but it always seemed like some impossible dream, so I never tried. I tried really getting on myself yesterday about it, but I guess today I felt different. I still want to do all those things, but I felt the motivation going away. I felt like all those goals were pointless and not worth working toward.

I really feel Ashlea had a huge part in it. Not her herself, but just hanging out with her and seeing how she lived made me really consider how I was and reminded me that it was possible. It brought out my motivation to change what I don't like in my life. But I felt like I wasn't good enough now since I was noticing all the things I didn't like, when before I just didn't think about them. I thought about having hobbies because successful people usually have hobbies that they like doing, even by themselves, and I couldn't think of anything that sounded interesting. I thought it would be cool to have a motorcycle, but would I really enjoy just going for rides on it? People who are into them do. Would I? No, it would just be to look cool to other people. I needed something that I would like doing on my own no matter whom I was with.

I thought of what I liked doing and it ended up just being watching movies or sitting on the computer and surfing the net. Nothing, really. I really don't have any hobbies. That made me feel even more worthless. I know I'm really good with computers, but I don't necessarily enjoy fixing them. I'm good at it but it's still a bother. There are very few things I actually like working at and I only like working on them for a little at a time. I suppose noticing everything I didn't have and trying to make myself do things to change them all was overwhelming and I felt like it was too hard. It was also really hard to tell what things I wanted to change for myself and what things I wanted to change just for appearance's sake, and while talking about all this energetically to Laura, I started crying. I didn't know why because I didn't feel sad or anything and I couldn't think of anything that would be making me cry, but there I was, and Laura was holding me while I did. I guess I was thinking I had to change my whole personality and everything to make these changes and it was just too much.

I realized that I didn't have to change myself. I could still be myself and make these changes. Honestly, I'm such a dork sometimes. The problem is that having a clean apartment isn't motivation enough for me to want to clean it regularly. I guess I'll just have to work on that.

I was pretty emotional a little while after that still. I wouldn't say depressed anymore, or even feeling negative feelings at all. Just emotional like I could start crying at any moment over nothing. I've felt pretty normal for a while now. I was just seriously trying to make myself be someone else for once in my life and it didn't agree with me. Then I realized I was being dumb and was really overdoing the whole changing what I don't like thing. Silly me. :P