(if you want it)

I am panicking a little.

I have not been practicing. Hardly at all. I have been mainly solving puzzles out of my Kakuro book and staring at my cell phone. That's pretty much all.

This might be one of those late evening angsty episodes that I'll feel stupid for later.

I don't think I really want to be a violinist. I want to go to graduate school. Basically I just want to go to school. I don't want to grow up. I want to be at Northwestern. I didn't think I would ever say that because I spent most my first three years wishing I was somewhere else and shutting myself in a practice room. When really the most meaningful thing I could have been doing is being with people I love. I figured I had some superior musical or scholastic drive because I was practicing five hours a day while my friends were in their dorm rooms sitting on their floors drinking sodas and laughing with each other.

But that's really all I can figure out that means anything. Being with people and sharing their pain and joy. I guess that's what attracts me to music, because it is a way for people to feel pain and joy together. But I do not want to spend most of my waking hours by myself practicing shifts and fine tuning. It doesn't mean anything to me right now.

If I weren't in the Army I would go do something else next year. Like the Peace Corps. Something far away that is vital for someone other than myself.

My biggest fear is getting a job out of college and staying there, getting into a routine and following it for the rest of time. I have a feeling that if I ever live by myself I will spend all my spare time playing Minesweeper and watching reruns of Scrubs. Because that is what I do with all my spare time now. Because it is a way for me to pass the time without actively engaging in my thoughts.

I don't want to live alone. Ever. Ever ever ever.

I want to be with lots of people. I want them to love me and I want to love them. I want to be a hippie in a commune and own nothing and share everything and be happy because life is good and love is everywhere. I want to live idealism and naivete and believe that people really are good and that things can change and that art is necessary and that TV is not. I want to make people better and I want to be made better. I don't want to believe in God. I want to believe in connectedness and laughter and peace and pain. I want to believe that people can live for the benefit of others and stop their petty pointless crap.

I hate the reality of everything around me. I hate the yielding of youthful idealism to the resignation and practicality of adulthood. I need a cold shower. I need to be woken up. I need to snap out of it. Whatever "it" is.