Chapter Zero

I've always kept a journal for longer than I can remember.

When I was a kid, I had these Lisa Frank notebooks that I wrote stupid shit in, like, "I think Tiffany is cute," or, "Mrs. Mayberry is a bitch." I didn't really know what a bitch was back then. I do now, though, and Mrs. Mayberry was a serious bitch-case.

I realize that Lisa Frank are girly notebooks, but I grew up wedged between two sisters, so fuck you. Don't judge me.

Toward the end of high school, I took my journals online, right around the time blogging became a fad. I also began to blog more narratively and occasionally with some cohesiveness or vague semblance of a point. I think a lot of my blogging was influenced by Rain Noe, a free-lance writer who picked up a healthy fanbase from AsianAvenue and LiveJournal, and Foo, a childhood friend of mine who wrote for the high school newspaper.

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The hardest part about keeping a journal isn't trying to find something to write about. Shit happens all the time. That's how you find things to talk about over some Shiners at the bar. Or if you're the kind of person who sits at a bar with absolutely nothing to contribute to a conversation, chances are you probably should stop blogging and get the fuck outside and do something.

The hardest part about keeping a journal is keeping myself from reading my own journal. Because it provides a snapshot of historical events in my life.

And I fucking hate my past selves.

I hated reading about how I spent months agonizing over some stupid bitch, or how I binge drinked an entire summer away, or how immature I reacted to past situations.

And that is how I came to learn that I hated my fucking job.

I'd been complaining about my job to my friends and my family. In fact, it was seemingly the only topic any of my conversations ever covered. I'd been dreading waking up in the mornings, contemplating the possibilities of driving forward on the freeway and missing my exits.

And more than anything, I'd been complaining to myself. In the form of Outlook notes and private blog entries, detailing conversations with colleagues and supervisors whose faces I wanted to introduce to baseball bats.

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I've always prided myself on being a smart and capable person. A person with all the skills and resources necessary to do what I want to do in life and be where I want to be.

And yet, I found myself in the mornings with wrinkled khakis, cheap polo shirts with the colllars morphed from washing, unshaven, and sometimes, hungover. Hating. Nothing in particular, really -- just hating.

So today, I have Lisa Frank to thank for where it all began. I read through my blog entries and learned that I fucking hate myself and where I am right now.

Milk good situations and change bad ones, I always say.

So I booked a vacation trip to Los Angeles for the hell of it and quit my job.

With no plans.

With no solid job prospects.

And with no giving a fuck.