Well, I sent an e-mail to my Technical Writing instructor asking if I could get partial credit since I had done the work, thinking, naturally, since I had uploaded everything he would have it. He sends me an e-mail back -- while I'm at work -- saying he can give me a C if I turn in everything by 8 PM. Also while I'm at work.

So once again, I'm doing the right thing and getting screwed for it. I was working.


I'm trying really hard to be adult about all this. Oh well.


I amused myself tonight at work by planning ways to modify the Truck Amuck for that Grand Escape thing I always want to do. Get a camper top for the back, put solar panels on top of it, run the wires inside to some batteries for my computer and a microwave and a little refrigerator, that kind of thing. Then just start driving west. Go find a campground somewhere with WiFi access. Go to California or Oregon or Washington State. Go see Meteor Crater and JPL and the Science-Fiction Museum in Seattle. Go see the Dryden Flight Research Center. Go out to the desert so I can see the Milky Way in all its true glory at least once in my life. Just go, and never come back.

Such are the things that dreams are made of.

The problem with emotional exhaustion is that your body is still ticking over at the usual speed but your mind would really rather just pull the circuit breakers and go offline for the forseeable future. But unless you're pharmaceutically or alcoholically unavailable, you can't go no-mail on yourself. It's a peculiar kind of torture, one with which I am uncomfortably familiar.

I'm afraid to even write this stuff here. One doesn't want to complain, for fear of being thought of as a whiner. I don't know what I'm afraid of, really, since whatever anyone else thinks of me I invariably think of myself in far worse terms. I hate being considered weak or fragile or unstable, yet for some reason I always end up being that way or at least looking like it. All my life I've taken care of myself. But there are parts of me -- I don't know if they're the more adult parts or not -- acknowledge that there are some areas of my life in which I am utterly incapable of functioning and that I will have to ask for help. It just seems like another failure to do so. I fail at literally everything. I honestly don't know why I allow myself to continue living. If I'm not going to reproduce I'm extraneous to the species anyway and should do away with myself as soon as possible.

I don't know. I'm signed up for Algebra with Mr. Street next quarter. After that maybe I'll take the next quarter off. It depends on if they'll be teaching Statistics or Pre-Calculus as a live class for the Winter quarter. Since I'm paying for all this now anyway maybe I'll just pick something for myself. Anyway, I'm going to try not to think for a little while. When I get like this I'm liable to go of in all sorts of directions.