Why isn't this working? Why isn't my life working? I thought it would. I mean, I sort of expected that it wouldn't work, but I knew I had to make it work, so I came into it expecting that it would work.

So many things are wrong. Too many things are not going the way I wanted them to. And I hate admitting that.

I was so confident and self-assured that I could live a life without stress and chaos. I expected that I would draw to myself an easy lifestyle, that life would not push me around, could not breach my exterior.

Which doesn't make sense. Because either you have a life that allows you to be happy or you have a miserable life which is meant to effect you and push you to see what you're not seeing.

What am I not seeing?

It's hard to know because it's hard to identify what exactly is wrong.

So let's list them.

It began by working. I didn't want to be at Quiznos. It wasn't because of the people, it was because of the waste of time. And everything has gone down hill from there. It's better at Starbucks, of course. But also worse.

If I was to work at Starbucks on hot bar 24/7, I would have less of a reason to want to quit. But I work on register often and even an hour in one week kills me. I usually work like 20 hours in one week, though I cheat a lot and do other important things in order to avoid register.

Truth is, I don't make enough to sustain myself, the economy is going down so it's difficult to find anything better. They won't let me work overtime. I can't do things that I want to do because I'm tied to work. I can't leave, because I have to make rent. I'm forcibly tied to a place I don't want to be tied to.

That's such a huge problem that involves pretty much everything.

Money, that's the problem. My world revolves around money. It's not like money is just about wanting things. This reality forces you to work and then forces you to give them the money you earn in order to live. But there are things that I want. And denying myself these things constantly would be worse than just giving them to myself. I could spend like zero of my money. But I want to buy things for Amelia or Isis. I want to be able to afford healthy food. I pretty much haven't bought any clothes since I moved in, except a jacket and a pair of work pants, which I think Joe left at the laundromat, but I want to be able to buy myself clothes when I need it, which I do because I've gained weight and I don't fit in 7 out of 10 of the pants I own. No joke.

I have spent a lot of money on my apartment, on making it an apartment that I can be comfortable and content in. And that has at least worked. There aren't problems that hinder me each and every day which I know could be solved with more money, I've given myself everything I need and pretty much everything I want, as well.

The second huge problem is technology. It has given me more stress than it has ever given me. I've had my own computer for like six years. I actually had my own computer for a few years before that but internet wasn't alive then and it wasn't the same thing. I've never had so many issues. As soon as I moved in here it began.

I bought a wireless thing for my desktop so that I could use the wireless internet of my landlord. My computer hates that thing and often shuts itself down to protect it from the threat. Sometimes when my computer is shut off, it won't restart until I unplug the wireless usb drive.

So my dad bought me a 50 year old laptop. He really shouldn't have done that. I bought an external harddrive because my laptop had like 8 gb of space, which was insane. My laptop was too old, and didn't have enough power to read the external harddrive.

Then my laptop broke down, with my only copy of my book, yesssss... I send it all the way to Utah and my brother merely turns it on and it's okay. The harddrive had some stupid error.

I sort of learned from the laptop incident, so I put everything from my desktop on my external harddrive, so that if my desktop crashed, I would still have everything. Unfortunately, I hate having doubles, because then I don't know what's where, and when I combine things I have to go through everything one by one to make sure I don't delete something I thought I had. It just creates a waste of time and excess, so I like to have only one copy, so I pretty much deleted 98% of all the junk I put on my external harddrive. I thought that it would be the safest thing, not imagining the possible problems that could occur.

On the way down to VA Amelia breaks my wireless internet thing for my laptop. I should be grateful, she only broke the plastic, the thing still works, though it's less protected. Though I wasn't sure it would still work at the time.

I bring the external harddrive down to VA with me. My dad suggests I use a cord to plug it into the wall so that it has extra power and will work with my laptop. I plug a higher voltage than needed, now my external harddrive appears to be fried. Thank God my laptop still worked. I had a copy of my book on my desktop, my external harddrive, a cd and my laptop though, so it would have been alright.

Now I've lost plenty from my external harddrive, though not everything.

Couple days ago I took this past month's worth of editing on my book and put it on my usb drive. I had an earlier copy of my book on my desktop, but I wanted the newer copy on my desktop. That day my laptop starts having issues. Something about software being incorrectly installed and the computer shutting down to avoid issues. It restarts and everything is okay for a few hours or something but then it happens again. Then it restarts but only for a couple minutes and then it shuts down again. Then it won't start up at all. Now it's saying that the harddrive has imminent failure.

I have photos on there that I meant to copy, though none really important, I suppose. Ooh ugh. Thank the lord I didn't delete those photos from my camera, though they were only random pics of my living room, I believe. I kept them on the camera because I didn't trust my laptop. They're not on my desktop. Again, I hate having copies. I never know what's where. So I believe that I also have those newer pics that I'm thinking of on my desktop. And hopefully the others are online.

I could have fucking backed up my external harddrive online. The company I bought it from had a way to do that so that if something happened to the drive, you could log into the website or whatever and have all the stuff you needed. Amazing. I didn't do it, of course. Couldn't be bothered.

If I could have, I still wouldn't have done it because I would have procrastinated too much before it got fried.

I came out of the shower and asked Amelia why she wasn't checking her email. She said that there was a problem with both of my computers. The laptop had this issue I mentioned and my desktop restarted because of updates and wouldn't start back up because of the wireless usb drive that was a "threat". I just sat there between two fucked up computers hating how technology is punishing me and I told Amelia that the awesome thing is that my book was on neither of them, because it was still on the usb.

I'm afraid to put my book anywhere because it seems like wherever I store it, the damn thing breaks. It's like I have five copies of the book and one by one they're being destroyed. External harddrive down, laptop down... three more to go.

At least that's what it feels like.

And it's not just my tv or my dvd player or my radio. I did have an issue with my car, but it was an easy-to-fix issue, by God's grace. The point is, it's my computer. And my computer is so much of my life. A dvd player is generic. A computer stores documents, photos, conversations, emails. It's a huge form of self-expression and storage, memories, business, sentimentality.

Why am I having these things ripped from me? This has never happened before. Why is it now giving me so much stress? Why am I magnetizing this?

A book that you read isn't one of a kind. My computer stores one of a kind moments and memories and thoughts and communication. It stores photos, videos, documents, it's insane.

The thing is, out of everything I have, I have to say that my book is the most important thing in my life right now. Aside from the people I care about and would be more destroyed by losing than my book, there is nothing I care about more. When I lost my photos and my documents I tell myself, as long as I still have my book. When my laptop breaks down, I tell myself I could easily throw it in the dumpster, as long as I have my book.

But because of all this trouble with technology, because of working, because of this chaos in my emotional body, because I feel so not on track, not connected to my spiritual self, I can't finish my book. I can't dedicate myself to it. I sit down to write in it and I have to spend two hours fixing something.

Then of course I spend so much time with Joe. When I have a day off and I tell Joe I can't spend time with him, it always ends up correlating with a day that Amelia has Isis so I take the opportunity and hang out with one of them. Or I babysit Isis at my house. It's either Joe or Isis, or technology is down.

And if it's not that, I watch movies instead, because I'm addicted to losing reality.

Yes, some people have drugs or alcohol or books. I have movies. It comforts me to watch someone else's life go by, instead of be stuck in mine.

I can't Be. I want to stop everything and just Be. All those hours I spent alone in high school, I was learning to Be. I was discovering myself, testing myself, learning how things worked, learning how to make things work. I quit high school and I didn't work and I spent so much time alone in my room, not being social at all - and perhaps it was a waste of time in one sense.

But I was being. I was relaxed. I just had this flow of harmony. This freedom to keep that harmony flowing. I wasn't always happy, I had issues, but they came from the inside. And because I didn't have any obligations anywhere, I could deal with the problems. I sat down and I listened and I learned and I grew.

True, some of the problems I was dealing with for the past three years, I didn't solve until I moved out. But things are ten times more chaotic now than they were before these problems were solved. It's like my solution opened up a can of worms.

Which begs the question, did I really solve the problems?

This interactive lifestyle just doesn't work for me. I have a job, I have a landlord, I have a boyfriend, I shop for myself, I go to the bank, the laundromat, I have coworkers. I still don't really have friends, which is sad. But I still have Amelia and Isis and Joe's family and some of my coworkers are pals - though I don't have any concrete relationship with them.

In any case, I have so much pulling from the world, so much being taken from me. So much of my energy, my time, my effort, my focus, and not enough time to regenerate, rejuvenate, charge. I need time to look inward, to think, to hear my thoughts, to study my thoughts, to test my reactions and push myself to grow. I need time to listen to the messages that I send myself in order to overcome the unhealthy patterns I'm holding onto.

I can't write my book until I can find inner peace. But I don't have enough time.

Between work, Joe, Amelia, Isis, shopping, cleaning, escaping reality (a weekly dosage of movie time), and then organizing my book - which is what I seem to do because I can't focus and center myself enough to write and express myself the way I need to, to write my book... I just don't have the hours it takes to center myself.

I've already put my photography and organizing things aside. I neglect my myspace and surveys and if I had had the time, I would have sorted through all of the photos I own, made them perfectly organized and burned them onto dvds for backup. But I couldn't let myself spend 20 hours on that when I needed to finish my book.

I wanted to start school next semester but the financial aid isn't going through because my parents don't live in NY and I'm apparently not financially independent because of this or that, I don't know. My mom wrote me an email explaining it but I don't quite understand it the way she wrote it. School will take time away, but the financial aid would give me money left over, plus, getting my two-year degree done will possibly help me in career opportunities.

Truth be told, this kind of my unspoken plan. I think that I'm going to move near my parents. I'll probably transfer to a four year college in VA. They live near one though Erin told me it was hard to get into, not that I wouldn't try. I suddenly feel like writing my admissions essay...

I'm still going to do psychology and writing, there are probably alternative psychology career options that would be supported by a psychology degree. I'm not going after a Phd though.

I want to write because that's obviously where I find harmony. Out of all the solutions I can think of, the best one is writing. Writing articles, really. Expressing things to people who want to listen. Ironically, I'm not sure how to explain why it's in writing that I channel my spiritual self, but in this lifetime, that's just the path I've chosen.

Honestly, I want to work for Shangra-La. That's my parent's non-profit organization. They work for it, they get a salary. Shangra-La bought the house they live in, and they're going to build a School of Being. I want to be a teacher there. I think that's why I can express myself through writing.

Because people like to read more than they like to listen. When you write, you don't write for a single person, you write for an audience. And I don't care who it is, I just know that I can say anything I need to say and someone will read it. Or perhaps no one will, it doesn't quite matter. It's that I can direct it to an audience who, in my mind, cares.

I talk to my sister, I talk to my dad, I talk to my boyfriends but I have too much to say and not enough of it they'll listen to. Too much of it they reject. I have so much to share, so much wisdom to impart and so much teaching and healing to do. But I don't have an outlet, other than writing. I could easily speak, I love to talk, I love to express myself out loud. I talk to myself all the time, I repeat speeches in my head directed at imaginary people who will never listen to my entire story, because I love sharing my stories.

That's why if I was a teacher, the people who would come to me would be those willing to be students. And that's what I need. I need students. That's why I write, because you don't need the students to be even in existence. You write for future students, for future readers, for anyone who could possibly need it in the future. If I had to wait for someone to come to me and say - hey, I want to listen, I would never be able to express myself.

But it's not enough to even talk to myself, I have to share it. I was meant to share it. I took embodiment so that I could share it.

I feel so detached from this world. To so many people, this is all there is. To me, I Am so much more. I can't see it or understand it within my mental limitations, but I feel it and I remember it. I live my life with the magnification on - so in other words, I see the details, instead of the big picture. I focus on the moments and the experiences that come along with those moments.

But when I write, when I express myself, I know that everything I express comes from another source. A source that doesn't belong, isn't trapped, in the reality that I see when my life is on magnification.

It isn't as concrete as this world is. I see this world, I hear this world, I experience this world directly and confrontationally. But I know that everything I experience on magnification is just a face for all that's underneath. I know that if I felt that the face was all that was there, I wouldn't have any sense of direction or purpose. I would be aimlessly wandering, tormenting myself and leading myself in useless circles.

Maybe that's what I've stopped doing. I've stopped writing about me. When I write journal entries, I write a lot of things about life and the world and myself that are valuable for my book. But my book is directed at other people. I think that the flow of expression comes from self-expression, not from directing other people.

I stopped writing journal entries and I tried to focus on my book specifically. But I never write about myself in my book, I always try to write about other people and it doesn't make as much sense. It's not such a direct experience as what I detail and understand in my journal entries. I take risks explaining things that aren't before me. It's like detailing a painting that's in another room. So easy to get it wrong. But I'm here and writing about myself and what that means for philosophy, psychology and spirituality as well as reality and the earth and the meaning of life... well, it just simply works.

And that's really the answer. It doesn't matter what I'm magnetizing in my lifestyle, because the only way to solve the issues that are giving me bad outcomes is to meditate on them, listen to yourself. When you're not introspecting, the universe has to mirror to you, so that you can look outward and still see yourself. But that usually doesn't solve problems because we still think that we're seeing an objective reality and we don't realize what it's really reflecting.

The chaos will dissipate. I feel out of control because I'm not connected to my spiritual self and thus, I'm powerless, I can't understand myself in lower states of consciousness and I can't find solutions in lower states of consciousness. When I pull myself away from my higher self, when I stop listening and focus too much on something outside of myself, I can't discover what will help me.

And I can't write about my book if I'm not writing about what I know. I'm not describing the color of my eyes by describing myself. Or if I am, I'm describing the potential color of millions of other people's eyes. You know? There are many, many patterns in humanity. We're not like snowflakes at all. And to understand a quality that you possess, a pattern that you possess, an issue that you possess or a solution, is to understand something that someone else is going through too. Not everybody, but somebody. I need to write about the people who are like me.

I can still conjecture about philosophical issues that I'm not currently directly experiencing, just so long as they connect to my experiences and compliment them. If they're not relevant to my experiences, they're just tangents with no purpose and not convincing enough to apply to someone's life.

My experiences aren't conjecture because experiencing something is all the proof you need, if you trust your experiences or recognize them for what they are.

I need to experience myself instead of experience my mirror image through the world. Cause it's distorted and it doesn't make as much sense.

I have to go night night though. Work in 6 and a half hours.