I just woke up, heart pounding and dehydrated. Orange juice quenched the thirst, but my mind is racing and I just can't see myself sleeping anytime soon and I've got to get up in four hours. Fuck.

It may appear overdramatic, but this whole business of school, it's starting to eat me up inside. The stakes are higher, GPA actually does matter in some respects and now I'm just feeling the pinch. How do people cope with this?

I had a revelation earlier in the night. I was considering the possibility of leaving school for a year with some friends, one of them remarked that I should because when you think about it, you've spent your entire youth indulging within the academic system.

Fuck.

I don't know what's going on or what I'm going to do anymore. I'm not getting any younger, the people around me are. Where is everyone my age? They've gone getting their lives in check before they leave school, while I sit here wondering where the fuck everyone is. This whole 'live week by week' thing doesn't work anymore. Maybe I should start thinking ahead.

I don't know when I'm going back to bed tonight.

The caffeine just settled in.

A day of marathon studying - ish - combined with a day of stress on various issues going on and a raging headache that just hasn't gone away after a week. And now it's almost 4 AM and I've got things going on in my head it just needs to be said in some medium, losing the muse through sleep would not be good.

I thought I had it all figured out. Graduate from high school, enter a new life with exciting prospects for the future. New friends, more experiences, learn new things about life and the world and get set for life without structure.

Almost four years later and things haven't really changed. I've lost a good friend to my own follies, I haven't gained anything substantial socially besides the casual aquaintance, school has not been fully endearing to me in most cases and I'm getting panic attacks about how life will unfold. Ironic, considering I never really thought past the next day until recent years.

I guess I never figured out how things are supposed to work once I got out of high school. Things are different. People don't just walk up to you and talk to you and automatically you establish a relationship, regardless of whether you share common goals or not. You were in a fishbowl, a closed community where it was easy to meet people. You were big if you were someone different than everyone else, did something that people wanted to do but never did. It was easy to be special. Entering this larger place, you weren't so special anymore, people didn't care to talk to you and meeting people wasn't as easy. It's a fruitless task trying to strike a conversation with that pretty girl who has a fetish for quoting Machiavelli, or that dude who backpacked all around Southeast Asia while you sat at home in front of the computer. People are instantly more exciting and interesting than you. What little accomplishments that were, were nothing more than irrelevent because everything I did was already done. This crippling loneliness is killing me, and so is this feeling of dread.

There are times where I just want to quit and run off to somewhere else, where spiritually I can just recharge and find new meaning to all this madness. At the same time, taking more time off from school and lingering within the system while the rest of my friends find themselves in the second phase of their lives as professionals is a bleak prospect. I've taken too much time already.

So what am I going to do about this? I tell myself every year that things are going to change. I'll meet new people, I'll get better at what I'm doing, I'll save money and go somewhere nice. Will things change? There's alot of that going around these days, maybe it will tomorrow. Next week. Next month. Next Year. When I'm 30. All I know is that I've been looking for change for almost 4 odd years now.

Don't mind this post, this boy is a little sad right now. Don't feel bad though, because chances are he'll forget all about it in a few hours in bed.

I really don't have anything interesting to say about what happened other than the fact that these next four years will be very interesting. And if everything works out, we can expect another four more years of a more rosey situation down south. I still can't get over how hilarious the little gaffe he made earlier this year. But besides that, I'm excited to see how things will unravel and the implications it has for us here at home. It doesn't seem like the NAFTA issue will be brought up anytime soon in terms of potentially re-negotiating the agreement, which is a good thing considering I am but a mere student who whores himself to pretty American goods. Let's just hope Canada is more relevant and on the agenda to this new administration we are hailing as a bringer of peace and change. We're people too you know.