Trying to study and not feelin' it. It's just like old times. I don't feel like doing my homework. I don't want to study. I want to do well, but I don't feel like I have any chance of it. I feel like I've already failed in every way that matters.

But, I haven't particularly failed at anything.

I think it tends to start when I get the first homework assignment that I find unpleasant.

But I was doing so much better than usual this time. I actually was even filled with a sense of dread about one of my classes; it wasn't going to satisfy any GURs or anything, and I sure as hell wasn't learning. But I still managed to hold it together and do the homework, even when the assignments were hard to swallow due to their busywork level.

I don't know. Maybe the previous assignments were all easier to bear in whatever quantifiable ways. I was getting feedback, at least. And there was a level of competition - in an essay pieced together from various bits of students' work, could I get my work to make up the majority of the essay? I got it to work out pretty decently. The bits the professor edited, anyway, were pretty big on my text. The parts the class voted on were slightly less sophisticated.

I think it was also partly triggered by the concert. I heard music and remembered again, for the first time in a while, that music is what I should be doing. I saw a beautiful self-empowered woman and realized, for the first time in a long time, that that's what I should be.

I want a tattoo(2), and I want to make friends who are SuicideGirls. I still want to be a counselor for adolescents. Teenagers are just so fucking beautiful. I don't mean aesthetically. I mean, in their souls. They are the most able to act on their passions. The most free to be empowered and real. And amid all that, many of them are humble - not by their own choice, but bedcause nature makes puberty ugly, and it keeps you down for a few years even after the basic transformation is over.

Adolescents are the most amazing people, because they will tell you if they think you are full of shit, and they won't stand for people being disingenuous, unless those people are their friends, in which case they might let it slide with only a few jokes cracked at them.

They love, languish, ache, fuck, dream, create, and care harder and louder than most of us will ever dream of doing again later in life.

I'm only 22 and I already feel old. I want to be a mentor to these people, but that's not really the word. I just want to have some friends. Teenage, passionate, caring, hard-living, struggling, depressed, angry, beautiful, artistic friends.

And part of why I want to be around them is so I can be around the bright light of them. And so that maybe, just maybe, they'll like me and/or trust me enough to let me see the spectacular glow that they cast upon the world.

And, part of it is because I don't want the depressed ones to kill themselves before that biggest burst of passion, creativity, love, and greatness gets built up to its bursting point, and makes its way out of them into the world, improving life for all around.

And, well, I guess that's why I'm in this line of work. Because I was so busy being a depressed lonely fuck as a teenager that I didn't let my music burst out of me and into the world. Because I don't want that to happen again, to anyone. And because I'm able to have a passion and Give A Shit about the psychological troubles of others.

It's 3 am and I've got to get up for school in the morning. I'm drawing on my arms, trying to make up for all the lost time when I didn't get to be me. Maybe someday soon I will get to be. I will dye my hair purple again, and say it's natural. I will draw a new tattoo every day, because I have a fear of committment, and every day will be different and unique and beautiful.

I just hope I can talk myself into doing my homework long enough to get my Master's and/or PhD. And maybe play some music on the side.

...Okay, definitely play some music. And not just on the side. As a co-primary objective in my long and twisting life.