Since I’ve nothing else to say today, I’ll just give you some links to visit from today’s GMAFB file:

• Oh, so that’s why tax and compensation structures make childless people overwhelmingly pay for other people’s individual, uncoerced choice to have children…
• So much for coming to the “Land of the Free”…
• The latest threat to the security of <hushed, reverent tone>The Homeland</hushed, reverent tone>: Zombies
• Yes, I am starting to think that all Republicans are white trash redneckswhose SUVs are more valuable than their houses trailers…
• Have I mentioned that I’m waiting with baited breath for this man to die?

I was spoiled last weekend with a whole couple days with absolutely nothing to do. Since then this week has been grinding. Long stressful days and evenings full of activity. I’m ready to just sit and net surf for a few hours with no other agenda…

But that will have to wait at least until next week. Tonight I have class and tomorrow we head off for a Central Valley road trip.

A dinner and visit with Dan last night led to some more rolling around in the psychological quagmire which is my urban outlook these days. I finally got it all out of my system with a long lonely walk through North Beach and Chinatown today.

I think I’ve learned a lot about what I should expect from where I live lately. I’ve learned that I can’t have it all. I’ve learned that in one way or another, I have to lower my expectations. The ideal environment in my fantasies is just that. It’s not something I should expect, nor gauge my experiences upon.

I will probably always live my life coveting the edgy urban experience I’ll never have the means or guts to make real. The key is to understand that the urban daemon kicked my ass and leave it alone at that. I have the ability to be happy without it. I’ll just always feel like I never got a chance to experience something that I really wanted to experience.

It’s just tough giving up on something like that. Like being at a party where everyone’s sharing a private joke about me that I just don’t get let in on. It feels mildy embarrassing and uncomfortable, and it probably won’t ever go away…

I’m having life anxiety lately. All the time. Every life situation I encounter reminds me of things that went wrong with my life, things that aren’t the way I wanted them to be. I’ve not made the wisest choices over the past few years and I need to fess up and change direction before I start seeing myself as a total failure.

I have a MA in Political Science where I studied security policy theory in Eastern Europe. I have spent the last 5 years of my life working in small business bookkeeping and accounting, with no academic training in it. With no adacemic work under my belt for 4 years, no foreign language ability, no publications and no experience, my education does not really qualify me for a any related career that I can think of. My work experience, being unrelated to my academic work, qualifies me for niche small-businesses which will tolerate that shortcoming, and my earning potential is drastically affected because of that.

This isn’t where I wanted to be a decade ago. I wanted to have a budding academic career, some publications under my belt and the potential for having a sturdy enjoyable 30s. The poor choices I’ve made over the past few years mean that this goal has been delayed a decade at least. For some reason the instability and psychological disillusionment I’ve been going through over the past couple years have sapped a lot of my ambition and expectations from life, and I’ve just sort of felt useless and drained.

It’s time to change that. I need to take charge of my future and stop being the architect of my own excesses and failures. No one else made me make the choices I’ve made. No one else can get me out of the hole I’m in. It’s up to me.