This week in graduate study finds our heroine battling crippling feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing!

Self: I am gonna start being awesome at school starting tomorrow!
Self: You will sleep in until the last possible minute and forget a freaking pen.
Self: Oh. Really? I thought was gonna start being productive.
Self: Nope.
Self: Okay.

As always, straightening my life-space tends to help maintain that illusion of control. Oh man, I am gonna get so much research done on this freshly made bed with newly laundered sheets!

This is what the fountain outside the library looks like when you finally finish your paper.

It's funny how suffocating feelings of incompetence and dread show up to the party as soon as I have a bunch of beastly work to get done. I want to tap my brain on the shoulder and say, "Just because work isn't fun doesn't mean you have to flood my bloodstream with feelings. Sack up."

These feelings tend to spike at 11 p.m. and increase exponentially as each hour of the night passes.

Nice fountain, though.

As my dad says, "Nothing's free but the sunshine." Free grad school isn't free. It costs $350 per quarter in cryptic "student fees." Rest assured there was much teeth-gritting and nose-wrinkling when I wrote that check today. I will exact passive-aggressive retribution by spending my monthly stipend check on cheap beer and tattoos. Take that, the state of Ohio.

Does anyone ever accomplish all the things they'd like to on their day off? When I go to Columbus for the weekend, I get nothing done. When I stay in town for the weekend, I get nothing done.

Also, because I spent the day looking up at the TV between staring at my books and the flashing cursor in my barren, barren Word document: Pundits! Stop referring to the election as a done deal! Quit suggesting that it will take a miracle for McCain to turn this around! You are freaking tempting fate! Haven't you ever heard of jinxing yourself? Cryin' out loud.

The window in my old bedroom. Tough weekend up in my brain.

I've had grand fuckin' plans to get myself together for years. I must've always known I was sort of kidding, deep down. This summer I'll train for a triathlon. This school year I'll do the goddamn dishes instead of drinking coffee out of a soup bowl. In Athens, it's been easy for me to be a person. Running. Eating better. Eating less. Being organized. Managing my time. Getting enough sleep.

But depression is always there, even when it sort of isn't, even if it's mostly white noise. The most docile pet dogs will still draw blood if you surprise them. Just because they sleep in your bed and kiss you on the mouth doesn't stop that electricity in their nerves. They're cuddly, affectionate beasts, but still beasts. And it's more than a beast, it's a bitch. And I'm not sure whether people who haven't experienced it can ever understand. It's not just feeling down. When it's bad, it's jogging uphill through maple syrup with a hangover.

I know this. I know this. But still, I'm embarrassed that after a sunny, productive couple of weeks, I thought I'd somehow "beat it". Like it's a cold.

I grew up in a big cozy house in the woods with five people and an unruly dachshund. There was no privacy, there were no closed doors, and near-constant clamor. It was noisy and normal and good.

While intense porch talks with Sjannie are invaluable, there is something to be said for just feeling like you're part of someone's comfortable backdrop. It was nice idly tapping away at a paper while Jason was studying for his candidacy exam or cooking. It was a strange comfort to watch, amused, as Nick set up the TV's picture in picture so that he could play Resident Evil on the tiny screen while I watched Stand By Me on the large screen.

I remember now, that feeling after you've split up with somebody, being tortured by not knowing what they're wearing or eating for breakfast or if they have to work that weekend. In the midst of creating this online record of my trivial bullshit, I didn't realize how much I'd hunger for other people's minutiae.

The first week of class was stormclouded over by all this car keys hassle. Parking tickets were amassing. Businesses were yanking me around. I felt frustrated and impotent, with no end in sight. I couldn't shake the codependent, irrational notion that if Nick was here, he would be able to magically fix it for me.

Today provided some much needed perspective about all the warm bodies out there who give a shit about me. I got two beautifully illustrated letters from Lauren, one of which contained two CDs of new sounds for my earholes. I got a notice in the mail that Ana had bought me a subscription to ReadyMade to balance out all my grueling scholarly reading. My brother drove two and a half hours to hand deliver my CAR KEYS (case of the missing keys closed, by the way: my mom absentmindedly palmed them into her purse last weekend when she visited). And when I reached Columbus, blood sugar on a sharp downturn, Nick had just returned from dinner with his dad at my favorite restaurant and had picked up a carryout sandwich there for me. Seeing that brown takeout box in his fridge for me was like Christmas fucking morning.