Or if not totally dry, it’s mostly just mud at the bottom.

Feeling sleepy and tired and logey today, so the words, they do not come easy. I honestly want to go back to bed. I have hit one of my sleepy patches and I feel very bleah.

But I will keep on doing my thousand words a day for as long as I can. It’s not impossible that I won’t have the time or energy to spare once classes start, and this long, long experiment in teaching myself to write by writing will come to an end, or at least be on pause for a while.

But I don’t want that to happen. No matter how much other work I have to do, I will still need to express myself directly like I do on this blog. Here, I can just spill out whatever is on my mind at the time, without filtering it or prioritizing it or organizing or any of that shit. And that’s invaluable for someone like me who always has a head overflowing with words that want to get out.

Writing this blog is the only way I know to relieve the pressure.

I honestly don’t know what this next phase of my life will be like. But I know it will make me better. Not just a better writer, but a more whole, confident, centered person who doesn’t feel so totally unprepared for the real world any more.

I am confident in that outcome because I know how much good Kwantlen did for me. I already find it hard to relate to the person I was before I went back to school. Hell, I have trouble relating to the person I was last semester. It really seems like that was someone else. A sadder, more broken, more incomplete version of me, that I love and want to care for, but at the same time, I am glad I am no longer him.

We will get through this together, old friend. I’m going to take us out of the darkness at long last. All those years of letting the days go by because it was all we could do to just make it through the day will come to an end, and we will gain the skills we have always wanted and, the biggest prize of all, employment. And with it, self-sufficiency.

I don’t think there is anything in the world that could do more for my self-esteem and general mental health than finally being able to earn a living.

And it will be amazing to go to prospective employers with a VFS diploma to use as proof that I can do what I say I can do. One of the worst things about going to job interviews back when I was still capable of doing it was the fact that I had absolutely nothing to offer employers in the way of proof that I was even capable of full time employment. No job experience, no diplomas, no certificates, nothing. Plus I had a lot of lost time to have to explain. It put me at a massive disadvantage before I even walked in the door, and when you suffer from social anxiety like I do, that’s enough to make it impossible to keep doing it for long enough for some employer to take pity on you and hire you.

My sister Anne told me that finding a job was about getting told no a million times before someone says yes. I was not cut out of that. I’m still not, not really, although these days I would be far more capable of turning on the personality and impressing the hell out of them that way.

I have great powers of personality when I turn on the charm. I am hoping to use that in the entertainment industry, which runs on personality in some ways. I still don’t have the actual social skills slash experience to use my charm as effectively as I would like, but there’s no way of getting over that except to go out there and get hurt, so that is what I will have to do.

Take your lumps and learn. That’s something jocks understand that nerds don’t.

And it will help greatly that I will have a role, namely that of student (or eventually, graduate). Roles help me immensely. That’s why my social anxiety was never an issue when I worked as a cashier/clerk for my uncle Sonny at his shop. I had a clearly defined role, so every social interaction with the customers was clear. I was the clerk, they were the customer, they wanted me to ring up their stuff or rent them things or whatever, and I wanted to do it for them. I didn’t have to navigate the murky and treacherous waters of personal, one on one interaction, where awkwardness rules and I never know who I am and my inner demons can easily persuade me that this person hates me and wishes I would just go away.

And that was all I needed, really. The role. I was quite good at that job, if I say so myself. And I do. I was personable, friendly, and efficient. And I liked the work. Like I have said before, to me, it comes down to people wanting me to do things I can totally do, and that, to me, makes it a highly pleasant job. I don’t find it humiliating to do that sort of work, like some people seem to, nor do I seem to encounter the Customers From Hell other people talk about.

So honestly, any small business that needs someone to run the cash register for them would be lucky to have me. Too bad I can’t prove it.

So who knows. Maybe I can dazzle some employer with my charm and my not being an irresponsible kid who is going to ditch work to get stoned with friends, and get a part time job downtown.

It would do me a lot of good.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.