Sore today. Tired today. Sorry today. Are there not days where you just want to commit seppuku? Out of shame for all your serious offenses? In a final stab (sorry) at retaining some honor? I do have a nice set of knives. It would be easier than actually paying off all those old student loans.

Going to USC ranks up there, high on the list of The Big Mistakes Of My Life. (I hear all my Bruin friends nodding their heads.) Why didn't anyone talk me out of it? You could have just shown me a mock-up of the bill, twenty years hence! Anyway, I finally got myself into a "program" where I'm going to work through my problems. (The guy at the Dept. of Education actually said he was "proud" of me for taking initiative. I told him I was glad I could make him proud, and he laughed. The only way to make a bill collector laugh is in the context of paying off one of the bills. Then, they'll laugh at anything.)

Just one of the thousand things I'd like to get behind me in this life, before I die. Have no sympathy for me. Tis all my own burden, and my own doing. Some nights I lay awake in bed, staring at some dark corner, awash in all the mistakes I've made over the years, all the embarrassments. Most of them no one remembers but me, and yet I can't seem to let them go. And any good thing I've done in this life is all but discarded and forgotten in their midst, overshadowed and obscured by my misdeeds. What a lonesome burden. What sorry ghosts.

Why Mrs. Ditchman ever agreed to marry and suffer through the rehabilitation of this sad louse hitchhiking on the road to perdition, I'll never understand -but always be eternally grateful for. Oh well, you get up and go build aluminum patio covers anyway, thankful for the opportunity! Hey, it's better than working with rock-lifting robots. ("The machine suddenly woke up and grabbed the man by the head.") I wish this week was over already. What? It's only Tuesday? GOOD GOD, MAN, HIDE THE KNIVES!


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