ty for answering guys... all good ideas. Anyone have links to mandalas and meanings?

i dont know why this is so hard... sometimes i just feel so removed and detached from the world. i get caught in thinking about the larger scheme of life and i feel hopeless, insignificant and like i've been a waste of human space. Someone else better than me is dying of cancer somewhere and they could have made better use of the lifespan than i have or can. i feel guilty for being alive and just being so useless.

see... i don't seem to have a solid inner core self. i only know how to respond to things.. not create things... can't seem to even understand what creating one's own path in a fulfilling way might even be like. i seriously can't even invision it. All i see is emptiness.

not every day feels this bad... not every moment is filled with the lack of interest in surviving.... but even on days when i feel happier, i am keenly aware of this lack of fabric that makes one whole. i am not whole... i am incomplete somehow in a vital way.

on one hand i am ok with who/what i am... i know i am eccentric and well, not average. On the other hand... there is a huge empty space where something important should be... and it isn't there... i can't seem to really conceive of what it is, except it seems to be what lets people lead their own lives on their own paths and do what they want.. or even know what they want. i have no clue...

i am embarking on a risky career... very uncertain and very unlikely to be able to make much money. Apparently i am good at it... people say i am and i get the appropriate feedback and "rewards" for it, so i guess i am. Is it what i want? idk... i really dont. i have never "wanted" anything in particular.

i told T that i more deeply understood the drive i have to avoid disapproval. i don't worry about approval because i don't think i deserve anything... but i work very hard to prevent diapproval in people that matter to me (i could care less what strangers think). i understand the perfectionism... how hard i drive myself... how hypercritical i am.... and all to "prove" myself in some unknown way to some unknown target person. Basically, i have more or less wasted my entire life. i've never stuck with many things because that internal drive forced me to keep moving... keep searching for that unknown magical pinnacle that would make everyone happy. The people of my childhood days created a velvet prison for me and i never knew until now. They berrated me for not reaching this whopping potential they said i had... they would keep me after school to yell at me because they said i was the top-scoring student in the district on the testing, but i didn't work hard enough as far as they were concerned... i wasnt acheiving what they said i should... and there it began.

i had no mentors... no role models... no one taught me how to work hard, to study, to acheive... no one taught me how to know if i did my best, or how to decide for myself what that "best" was. No one taught me how to be satisfied, fulfilled or to understand my own wants and needs. i basically just developed my own system of operating in the world that has a wonderfully glossy shell that looks so well put together. i look like a well adapted person who has the world by the tail in so many ways, but inside i just drift.. i do whatever i figure out is what someone expects of me. Nothing feels real or solid.

i drift.

so here i am... on the edge of a big career event... i should feel something... but i don't. i dont even care.

i detach.. i float away... and what i see is how insignificant we all are. Struggling and working and trying all our lives and for what? i don't believe in religous things... don't believe in anything after this. We work so hard, inside and out, and in the end our minds start to go, our bodies give out and we are blown away like fine dust.

there wouldn't even be a hole where i was... in someone's life i mean. There are a lot of people who would be hurt and upset, but there isn't a single person who would have to change even one thing about their day to day life. Not one. No one would wake up and look at an empty pillow. No one would notice an empty place... how depressing is that?

idk... T and i started talking about this... this self evaluating i have been doing and trying to figure out what is really true and what is not. i don't understand the point of just putting a better "spin" on a wasted life. Sure.. you might feel better for a while, but how does that solve anything? i have no idea how to not waste the rest of whatever time i have. None. Like i said, no core sense of what i am or what i want.

i think sometimes about blue skies... when the clouds are high up... an open window on a warm spring day.. that new smell the earth has.

sorry... i've just been rambling