So, I’m back home for the summer, and the typical depression has set in. There is really no reason why it should be, things (At least in my own little sphere of things) are probably the best that they have been in the last few years. I have just gotten a job doing fuck-knows-what at the local Kmart, and yet I feel like shit practically every second of every day. This summer seems particularly bad for depression, yet paradoxically it should be the most happy of times. My mother came in my room not more than twenty minutes ago and told me how one of her workmates was impressed at my intelligence, based off nothing more than a twenty second conversation that we had earlier in the day. I’m a sham, that much is true, and a failure to top it off.

I think that I’m depressed because I’m such a leech to every single person around me. When I’m in the sphere, the bubble that is DePauw, everything that happens is a direct result of what I do. When I’m home here in Lancaster, everything is out of my hands. I am a savant – I don’t know shit about electronics, I don’t know how to drive, I can’t buy alcohol, and all the food that I eat is provided for by my family. I’m an utter fucking loser, and I make my parents worried beyond belief every time that I get trashed. I’m worse than a pile of shit.

People think I’ve somehow gotten somewhere by completing a large amount of my undergraduate studies in college. No, the only thing that completing my studies will get me is a piece of sheepskin. No promised land, here, kiddos, and even after getting done with my graduate work in 2010 or so, I will still be at the whim of bona fortuna. I might be releasing a CD compilation and starting up a record label in the next few months, but I’m not able to help all the bands I want to help. I’m very literally taking money from the hands of kids and giving it to others – I am not a modern day Robin Hood, but your common shyster.

I think my depression also stems from the fact that I’ve not had a real significant other for such a long time, since April of 2003. I’ve only been intimate with one other person since then, a total one-night stand that ranks right up there on the “Shit I Wish I Hadn’t Done” list. I have someone psychotic here in Lancaster who is “going out” with me, even though we’ve never met and probably aren’t likely to either. Each time I talk to this person I learn that ey is a little more ape-shit crazy. A few discussions into our friendship yielded up the fact that ey is starting a racist club at the school that they attend. Fucking delightful, a racist thinks that I’m eir boyfriend. Great news, too... ey absolutely hates gay people. Blah, why are all the cool datable punk kids such assholes or so closedminded?

So, I have about three months of feeling useless to wade through before I am slammed with the final year of work over at DePauw. Sometime before August I need to wade my way through Cakewalk, QuarkXPress, Adobe Pagemaker, Flash, and enough GRE material to choke a horse. Aside from that, I still need to design the entirety of the Lancaster Vs Greencastle compilation, as well as get somewhere on the compiling of my next compilation, the Unearthed:Lancaster Music 1990-2005. Let’s be honest here, I will probably only do a tenth of what is planned, the band (The Grimace) that I am in will never practice, and I’ll be fucked for the beginning of school.

However, a few small things are going right for me at this moment. First off, the fact that I picked up a job the day after applying was an amazing stroke of luck, as I was just talking to an individual online who took three months to find a job in Lancaster. It may be a shit job, but it pays $6.50 and gives me non-food preparation experience to boot. The bands that are here in Lancaster have been really helpful with matters, as well as being incredibly openminded and not quite as factional as those in Greencastle. I’ve learned that two kids that I just assumed hated me with all the fury in their bodies really didn’t have a problem with me, so I really don’t have to watch my back for the punkers in town. Still nothing to say about your average redneck, though.

I think my natural tendency in things is to be depressed, regardless of what I currently have. I have a serious perfectionist streak to me that I usually don’t acknowledge, so even if I do finish up this compilation, even if I do raise the $2500 that I need to sign a band on NeuFutur Records, even if our band practices every day, there will still be shit that I haven’t accomplished, people that are just better than I am. I will be depressed until that day I reach immortality. Guess I’m living to be disappointed, wouldn’t you say?