I forget where I left my Dashboard Confessional CD.

I've been blogging since the summer before I started college. That seems rather weird to me for some reason. I went from OpenDiary.com (which I joined so I could find a girl's diary) to Diaryland.com (which I joined so I could find a girl's diary) to LiveJournal (which I joined because was so hip, and when I ended up using to stalk classmates). After all of those blogs ended in disaster (oh, how long would it take for me to learn that you don't write things on the internet that you don't want some people to read?!) I took a break before moving on to MySpace, which I could never take seriously enough to write anything too important.

I happened upon one of my Diaryland journals last night (the more "secret" of the two, which a lot of people still found). I get a kick out of going back and reading what insights I had when I was a sophomore and junior in college. It's kind of like when I re-read The Perks of Being a Wallflower over Spring Break during my sophomore year. When I was in eleventh grade, I loved that book - it was one of my all-time favorite books ("all-time", of course, referring to the maybe seven years I was capable of reading novels). I thought the protagonist was "just like me" and I related so much.

I read it again when I was just two years older, and I thought, "Man, I wanted to be like this kid? This guy is a loser!" I mean, he was. He was whiny and annoying. The most interesting things he did were read Ayn Rand, do drugs, and whine. What a relatable character. It made me realize that I wouldn't even have been friends with me in high school if that's what I was like. (At the same time, though, I still hated the people who I was fake-friends with in high school. You know, the friends by proximity that quickly forgot your number a week upon registering for their freshman writing courses.)

I have the same reaction to my journals from two years ago. Hell, I was pretty annoying six months ago. It's so funny that in about a year I'll look back at my blog posts from this last month and thing, "GOD. What an asshole."

At least I'm not quoting Dido lyrics, though. Man, that was a really bad point in my life.

There was one entry, however, that I wrote a couple of summers ago. It was about whatever problem I was having with whatever girl, and I was being whiny and bitchy and all emo as fuck about everything. This stood out to me, though: "It's been another long summer of sighs and longing for something I can't have. Of course, it's still undetermined whether I can have it or not, it's just a matter of waiting. And waiting. And then what? The inevitable heartbreak that I should be used to by now."

I think that pretty much describes my outlook on life. I stress and stress and stress about X and when X doesn't turn out the way I hoped, I get all depressed and then start to cope by stressing over Y. I'm doing it now, with the job hunt. And then with the GRE. And then with grad school. It's this cycle I go through year-round: I'm always on the lookout for something to get all worked-up about.

There was an entry where I quoted a line from Lost in Translation: "The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you." I'm still at this point in my life where I have no idea who I am and what I want. I need to figure those things out.

I don't know why I'm writing all of this. I guess I just wanted to blog something today and, unfortunately, today had to be one of those days where I was feeling all nostalgic while simultaneously worrying about where I'll be in six months. Oh, if only a homeless person had hit on me this morning! Then I'd have something somewhat entertaining to write about.

I don't want to think that from now on I'm going to feel more optimistic about things, that finding my old journal has somehow made me a better person or felt better about where I am right now. All I can hope is that in a year from now, I'll look back at this and think, "Hey, that's when things started looking up!"