I fear I am balancing precariously between something that could be called true happiness and utter, debilitating self-loathing. No, much worse: I feel some shade of happy, while something inside me tells me I ought to be consumed by self-loathing. No...

You'd think I would, is all. I spend so much time alone these days, unemployed and with no papers to write. I set my alarm for ten and sleep until noon. You'd think I'd wake up after sleeping most of my day away and hate myself. Every night I promise myself I'll go to a temp agency, get a job. Or learn a chapter or two of Dutch, at least. But I construct a list of things to do instead and I do at least fifty percent of them. I've made Ebay my job and our living room into my office. You'd think I would. Hate myself.

It's not just this. I've let myself down in so many ways. I've failed to live up to my potential in so many ways. I've made all these excuses. And I have excused myself. Without penance. I just let these things go, and I say I'm growing, when most of the growth is still slated for the future. I'm saying, you'd think I, someone who has always been relentlessly self-critical, all-or-nothing, you'd think I wouldn't be able to stand myself.

And I write this, still some shade of happy. Or indifferent. I don't mind myself, at the moment. I cannot work up enough self-respect to hate myself. And even as I realize that, I still don't really care.

And so I wonder if I've been hiding behind this, my philosophy. That even when I qualify my position of never-ending outward progress, I'm still hopelessly optimistic and therefore deluded.

These weeks, I've done nothing. All right, I've made over $600 on Ebay, which might be as much as I'd make in any other more respectable employment. But I sit around, and sometimes the most industrious thing I do all day is shower, and then I fill out another loan application like some prescription I'm abusing. I am so horrifically unconcerned.

It's not just about money. It's not about work ethic. I don't know if I can explain.

I have constructed this perpetually positive outlook, in which I do, truly, expect ever more happiness. Because my friends worry if I am unhappy for too long. Because my parents are happy when I'm happy. When I write my father an upbeat email he says he is "tickled," he says he can tell how happy I am by my words and I allow the happiness he gets from my supposed happiness to make me happy. Or some shade thereof.

Occasionally I put words together in a way that pleases me. I have a language, a voice: this diary is in some way purely me. But I am not a writer.

And I don't know what I mean by that, I just scribbled it on a scrap of paper while waiting to connect to this damned internet, in a cursive scrawl that resembles no other cursive scrawl of mine. Inconsistent to the last detail.

There are times, I don't know what I truly believe and what I just want to. And worst of all, even if I could sort out what I truly believe into a tidy pile, I still couldn't validate any of it. They're just beliefs: I wonder at others' beliefs; mine are as baseless.

And this is all just part of all that "finding myself" crap. It's so silly. But I guess that's what the 20s are for. The teen years are for burying it deep, and then this for finding the X that marks the spot, if you can get it to stand still long enough, and digging it all up again. And then, what, a day to put it all back together again.

The thing is, I don't agree that you need to "be who you are." Your environment made you who you are; they all chose you for you. You have no say in who you are! It's conditioning, it's environment. They chose you from the first day your eyes could focus until the day they could truly dilate. Be who you are and you're only an imitation.

And so I say: be who you want to be. You choose. And then be that. Find your voice, your words, and sing a new song.

The danger is only in your motivation. I'm not advocating redefining yourself to fit into this or that group. That's the danger. Because every idea is formed by another. How do you know why you want what you want? Why you believe what you think you believe? What comes from you? Why do you choose, each and every day, to go on living?

I have been specifically trying to articulate the answer to that question for a year now. And I still can't.

My problem is, I know exactly who I am and I have no idea who I want to be.

And I became so comfortable in who I am that these nearly incoherent ramblings barely affect me.

How long have I been saying it? For five or six years, at least? It's time to live. Yes, I have been sheltering myself. And I don't know at all what I believe is true. It's all become so fuzzy. And that's my fault.

I am ready to be absolutely flattened. Just laid out on the sidewalk, fallen from a far height. I want disastrous romances and inexplicable sobbing and snap decisions.

And if I don't live up to my potential, I want to be intensely bothered by it. I have been sitting around. Wasting away. And I am fabulous. This needs to bother me.

So my god, enough talking about it. I know what I have to do, and -- plane ticket in hand -- I have the means with which to do it. It may be a painful process and I don't know where I'll end up. But I swear it's going to be real. And I swear I'm going to feel something. That has to be better than "I guess I'm happy. Sure I'm happy." Just to feel something.

I've had a lack of inhibition
I've had a loss of perspective
I've had a little bit to drink
And it's making me think
That I can jump ship and swim
That the ocean will hold me
That there's got to be more
Than this boat I'm in

They can call me crazy if I fail
All the chance that I need is one-in- a-million
And they can call me brilliant if I succeed
Gravity is nothing to me
I'm moving at the speed of sound
I'm just gonna to get my feet wet until I drown

I don't care if they eat me alive.
I've got better things to do than survive.
Ani diFranco