" He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person,...

...to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others-- the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad."

~Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

I'm the girl in the Edward Hopper picture again. Drinking coffee by myself in an empty laundromat, the reflected lights stretching into infinite abandonment.

I spoke too soon when I said that things were falling into place. I've had two major disappointments recently, and one minor one. I'm dealing with them a lot better than I would have a year ago; I recognize and truly believe that what has happened is for the best. But it still sucks.

In an effort to restructure my idea of what this semester will be, I've been trying to analyze what this crappy feeling is that lurks inside like so much green ooze. I thought it was just a mood, but perhaps I am really at a loss to define what it is that I'm doing with my life right now. I feel listless and unmotivated. What are my goals? To become a better actor, a better person, broaden my horizons, learn... On Sunday, in RS, our lesson was about the future, what to do when things don't turn out the way you expect them to, (namely, when you don't get married when you're at BYU...) One of the things which was stressed was that we should make ourselves as complete as we can, creating a strong base within ourselves; we don't need someone else to complete us. The idea of myself as a strong, independent woman is appealing. I have been trying to work on this, to make myself a more independently complete person. It doesn't work. I have heard this sort of thing in RS ever since I entered it Freshman year. I have been obedient and tried it. But life is made up of relationships. The most meaningful parts of our lives are our connections with other people. Yes, you need some strong roots, but you also need interaction with and nourishment from other people. Perhaps my problem is that everyone around me has something in their lives which drives them every day. Usually, for me, that something would be an acting class or a play. None of my classes are inspiring. As Macbeth winds down and Hamlet launches into weekly performances, I don't feel like I have a project which spurs me on, that thing which I'm passionate about, that I look forward to every day. And I'm at a loss as to what to do with myself. A relationship? That would be fantastic. A new challenge I have yet to explore. But that opportunity is one of my more recent disappointments, and I don't see a recurrence anywere on the horizon.

I guess I just keep going.