It's funny when someone you have no contact with tells you everything about you.

I peruse my ex's journal from time to time. It's very telling. Not telling of her, mind you, but more of me. She's in college for a medical...something, I'm in college for English.

Those who know about degrees knows from that description alone about who is going to go far and who is going to be stuck in a dead end job.

Short of actually writing bestselling books, or getting a lucky streak and becoming a news reporter, or even achieving the dream job I entered into this path to begin with to get, I don't foresee my career in being a critic of either movies or music in print panning out very far, and have been considering switching to something potentially medically related myself (likely an X-Ray technician), if not music production or... i don't know, cooking.

It's also telling to me that I've made some rather incredibly stupid mistakes with my life, and while she may not be in the best of situations, I know she has more experiences than I do. She got a job when we were still together. I slacked, and didn't get a job until recently. While the Recession is one of the main factors to blame (it hit rather hard here), the other major factor (and arguably the larger one) is my lack of drive.

My job is a fantastic one. I love it and I'm lucky to have it. It doesn't pay well enough to allow me total independence, though, and this realization that I've done nothing is what strikes me hardest.

We're both making something of ourselves, but she's much farther along than I am. I hate it. I would like to clarify, I don't hate her. I hate myself more for putting me into this position. I did this, to me.

In her most recent journal, she talks about how she's going to be alone, permanently. She's never been alone, truly. She has multiple friends, and has been in a couple relationships past me. I have...a few friends, not nearly as many as her. I see my friends once a week. Very little contact is made outside of that day. I also have not been in a relationship after her.

Both of these were mostly by choice, though I can tell my reclusive nature has started to have an adverse effect on me. Being alone has its merits, merits I enjoy very much, but when the desire to be with someone you love comes around, it's pretty tough to take. It passes eventually, of course, but involuntary loneliness isn't fun when it comes around.

Sometimes, I catch myself daydreaming about those few years, and what could have been had I made some different choices. "I could have done so much differently," I think to myself, and I think about how I could have seen her more often than...well, once. At the least, I could have made different choices to where I could see her every few months.

I usually try to shake these thoughts out, because if I dwell, I end up feeling godawful for the rest of the day because of what I did wrong, and knowing it can't be helped.

I'm going to go play FL like a villain plays his pipe organ, take my mind off things.