For a long time I felt that my life was simply meandering and moving forward with no destination. Sadly, I still feel like that sometimes. What makes the recent feelings worse is that I’m taking steps to rectify the ennui and what feels like aimless drifting by going to school full-time and am left with what feels like little more than time-consuming monotony. I don’t mean to sound like a pretentious know-it-all, but most of my classes are just busy work. I had the highest grade on the first test in my English class and I didn’t even read the last (and longest) book of the unit. In addition to this, I have to drive 80 miles round-trip three days a week to attend classes, which generally leaves me with little free time, or free time in such insignificant chunks that it might as well not even be free time. In addition to this I’ve got two English classes, which means I’m usually having to read one and a half or two novels per week, which means I don’t have time to read anything of my own choosing.

I’m probably just now starting to feel the downside of taking so long to figure out what I wanted to do in school. I’m going to have to take two summer classes just to be able to get in to my professional program for the fall semester or face tacking yet another semester on to the end my seemingly endless college career. I don’t claim to have any knowledge about what particulars make people depressed or contribute to the loss of hope, but I do have a guess. It seems like lack of control is the major contributing factor to mental exhaustion and eventual breakdown. While I feel like I’m ultimately in control of my life, the lack of results or any sign of progress is what I seem to be facing. It feels like no matter how hard I run, or for how long, I can always count on looking back over my shoulder and seeing where I was a year ago at a pitiful distance right behind me.

For now all I can do is keep running.