I gave all that I came to give.

ummm...

stop worrying so much...
dont let anyone (middle aged racist women) boss me around/talk me into doing things i don't want to do
be good at my job
find a cooler job
take classes outside of sfsu because it sucks
let my roommate drag me to the gym more often
plan a trip with my krew b/c i miss them like crazy.
get rid of all the shit in my room that I don't actually need
be more patient with people who live in the city
and when that doesn't work to feel free to tell people to suck it.

do something career wise to outdo zach efron.
make $$$ so i can take my boo to
a. sandals Jamaica
b. Europa.

I think I'm going to live for myself and no one else. Sounds good to me.

Oh San Francisco you have deadened my senses.

If you want something done a certain way, do it yourself.
Don't bitch about it until someone does it for you.
Because I'm not going to do it anymore, and trust me the rest of the world wont do it either.

Days of shopping, three hours of cooking and thirty minutes of eating. Then another hour of doing the dishes and cleaning up the huge mess you just made. Then, pie. Happy thanksgiving.

I'm watching Angel Island burn right now from the presidio. It's getting bigger while I'm watching it.

why is it that whenever i get my haircut it ends up two inches shorter than i meant it to be?

I quit my job today because I couldn't quit my life and I still have a sliver of hope that my life will get better. Someday, I will be a functional human being and I look forward to it.

Meanwhile, working with bipolar assholes and white trash maidens from the deepest darkest crevices of society was making me shake.

Generally, getting up at six every morning makes me want to kill myself. And then, last week, I had to get up at 4am. So I am feeling a little bit better but not very much. How the fuck do people do this for years?

Actually being at work is not that bad because I'm already awake. But the ten to fifteen minutes right after my alarm goes off are very, very dark times. I also have to work with the biggest, bipolar asshole of all time right now so I'm trying to pump myself up by telling myself how cool and normal I am and stuff. It's not working very well.

I don't have anything to say.

Dear Sara,

This is the letter that I would have written to myself four years ago when I was your age. This is what I would have told myself, and what I will tell you, even though neither of us will listen.

High school is not real life. It's a tiny, microcosm where no one acts like themselves or even has an inkling into who they will be. All of this will change the day your graduate. I know it sounds like I'm being dramatic, or even that I 'don't know what I'm talking about'. How can there be an invisible line between the day you are a high school senior and the day your a high school graduate? Very rarely have I led you wrong, except for the time I convinced you that the ginger Barbie was cuter, but you can trust in me now that I am telling the truth.

It might seem like not having the right friends or the right thing to wear or the right car or the right family, is the end of the world. And for you sometimes, it will feel so real it's actually painful. But it's not. I'm not telling you to just try and live under the radar, to never be yourself and I'm not telling you to never try to fit in. What I am saying is that none of it will ever really matter.

The most important thing I can tell you is that once high school ends, it's over. And all those really, really embarrassing or heartbreaking or stupid things that happened to you over those last four years will never hurt again. It's like once you graduate, the slate is wiped clean. And you get to go off to college with all this new amazing people who are just as ecstatic as you are to be able to go to a 2pm class in sweat pants, or eat top ramen for dinner 7 nights a week.

All you have to do, is put up with this shit for two more years. It will get easier, it will get harder, but most of all it will get closer to the end. Don't let anyone talk you into anything and don't miss out on some of what will seem like the most poignant moments of your life, just make it through-so you can start your real life.

Love,
Jessica

I love dogs.
But if my neighbor's dog doesn't stop yapping and throwing his tiny little body against that metal trash can, I'm going to have to duke it out with him.

I was whining to my friend about my obsession with other people's problems and he told me to leave him alone and go write about it.
I guess that makes you on lucky reader!

When things go anywhere near the direction of wrong, I get worried. Not regular worried like Shit I hope I blew out that candle next to the cat! But more like my own whiny voice on repeat and going over and over every single detail of my problem, I can't think about anything else. I just have to wait it out. Is this normal? I'm not sure.

I need to relax.

You know those commercials for trips to Sandals, Jamaica? I think my health would benefit from one of those. When you are laying on a beach drinking an iced alcoholic beverage it's probably very difficult to have bad karma. It's probably a lot easier to sit up and look up at the blue sky and say FUCK! I LOVE MY LIFE! I need to learn to do that more. Or maybe I should start listening to Jason Mraz or something, that seems like a good karma thing to do. I'm not sure writing in here makes me feel better or worse, more in touch or less alone.

Some people say they work best under pressure. I don't really believe in that but I do think that I come up with some pretty reassuring shit when I'm stressed out or scared, and my heart rate is about a thousand beats above normal. The logical side of me, which exists one week a year, takes over and guides me out and away from the burning bus.

Sometimes when you're not paying attention or especially when you are, your life will just disintegrate. And then everything you've built or dreamed up or worked for, is gone. And all that's left is your best friends, your family and your farting dog.

In the past week I:

~Was thrown out of 2 consecutive bars in less that thirty minutes.
~Bought and operated a toilet plunger for the first time in my sheltered life.
~Consequently, ordered a new toilet courtesy my landlord.
~Was held wrongly responsible for a misplaced $2800 check.
~Turned 20.
~Watched my new roommate cry hysterically for 3 hours (during our shared birthday party) without ever taking a breath, during which her 15 year old sister got drunk to the point of immobility and then began to hook up with her sisters child-boyfriend, watched her friends trash/graffiti/ destroy our house and then refuse to leave until 3am.
~Get fired from my job.
~Said psycho roommate 'decides' to move out 2 months into a year long lease.
~Dropped all my enrolled classes for next semester because I knew I would hate them.
~Signed up for all Creative Writing classes for which I am not qualified.

So that's about where I stand. Luckily I have very nice friends who clean up puke and scrub down graffiti, who throw out derelicts and deliver fuck you's with ease while I throw panic attacks. And also a very nice boyfriend who drags his butt out of bed and travels across town to take me to Target when I get fired by a menopausal hag. Luckily my parents tell me to come home for a week and hang out with my dog. And luckily my roommate had enough sense to move out before we killed her.

My dog just farted.

Sometimes you just have to start writing and writing and typing out things just to watch the Times New Roman font pop up on the screen.
I can't stand writing by hand. Somehow after high school I developed the habit of writing in all caps like an architect (or my mom) and now it takes me twenty minutes to write half a page.
But I love to type. If I could, I would conduct my entire academic career via email. Fuck raising my hand forgetting what I was going to say or having someone blurt it out second before the teacher calls on me. Email is awesome. And I love the little 'ping' sound that the gmail icon on my desktop makes every time I get a late notice from the library or my dad sends me a picture of the latest gross fish he caught in the ocean.

Does everyone feel like it's going to take them 8 years to graduate or is it just the 40,000+ people at San Francisco State?

Why does Tori Spelling have her own show and I don't?

Dear Mom and Dad,
Well I am sorry to inform you that I got another parking ticket. This story has a special twist! I forgot to move my car from a Tuesday morning street cleaning spot because both me and Emily got sick from eating polish sausages for $1.50 at Costco the night before. So when I went to check my car after work, I had an empty envelope from the Dept of Parking and Traffic, placed not on the windshield, but underneath the back tire.

I would like your advice on the matter. Should I inform the DPT that I got the empty envelope when I pay my previous ticket? (Whereabouts: Unknown) Or should I just pretend I never got it? Or should I fight the ticket?

I figure writing this email will save us all time and arguing when I call you tomorrow morning to inform you that I am conveniently broke at the time of both citations.

Love your Stupid Daughter,
Jessica

As if the complimentary gift wrap isn't enough, a lady came into my work today and forced me to write a poem in her grandmother's birthday card.

This is why I'm double majoring in Journalism and Creative Writing, people, it's so I can write about a grandma who doesn't like to get out of her wheelchair in iambic pentameter.

I'm not sure how much longer I can do this. I put two of my custom greeting cards in prominent places in the store today but no sales. Although, someone did pick one up and say 'neat'. But six seconds later the same person looked me sternly in the eye and asked why we didn't have more gift items featuring Scottish Terriers.

I can't make this stuff up.

Living in the city is weird.
There's never anywhere to park, you can get thai food until 4am and the bus systems are crap. Also, you have to get your keys out three blocks from your apartment, in case you have to make a run for it.
I can hear my neighbors stomping up and down their stairwell through a shared wall conveniently located at the head of my bed. I can also hear them flush the toilet, fight, take a shower, and watch daytime television.
The largest park in the city is a two blocks from my front stoop but it transforms into a homeless shelter between the hours of nightfall and whenever the cops discover their sleeping bags underneath the trees.
For the past week, my boyfriend has woken me up because there is a succession of sounds reminiscent of rapid gunfire coming from 19th avenue. I'm not sure which is worse, the fact that I live on 20th or that I normally sleep through the noise.

Plus side, Irving Pizza is open until 2am, the only gas I use is moving my car during street sweeping and on Thursday and Sunday mornings there is an all-organic farmers market in Marin.
The Liquor store (2.3 minutes from my bedroom) refuses to card me and the proprietor even suggests his favorite mixers. My roommate and I have discovered a delicious meal called: what's in the refrigerator. And sometimes it transforms into sliced jalapeño and onion cheesy bratwurst 4 egg omelet!

Was amaaazing! I'll have 'Dancing Queen' stuck in my head for months now.

Sometimes when I go to write in here I feel like a cheesier, fatter and brunette version of Carrie Bradshaw if she were to write about really, clueless 20 year olds and their scarily unstable relationships with each other.

Just picture the beginning of every one of these entires with a panoramic view of the San Francisco public transit system, my face on the side of the train and sentences like "the fall quarter romance" or "sex texting" flashing across the screen. Very S&TC, except instead of cosmos the cast typically drinks glass bottled Stellas and makes out in garages. Also, things like Birkin bags and Louboutin (sp?) stilettos are unheard of, however nubbly peacoats from h&m paired with converse sneakers are very popular.

Is it just me or are people my age dealing with relationship problems better suited for a generation 10 years our senior? A lot of the long, serious talks I have with friends (while simultaneously watching Project Runway on tv, forgive me, I have a short attention span) aren't exactly revolving around 'she doesn't like my friends!' or, 'how hard is it to light a match before he leaves the bathroom?'.

More and more of relationship problems that cross my path (or are all to often, on my fucking path) are deep seated and well, serious. Things like drawn out long distance relationships, or fear of loneliness, warring families or just plain, really being in love with someone. It's like we're in it to win it now, it's not like in junior high when you want a boyfriend because you're bored and you're pretty sure you can beat him at basketball. And it's not like high school and you date someone because your drinking schedules coincide.

Now you have to really know yourself to stay with someone. Which is bullshit, once you finally find someone you really like, you have to turn from an insecure, self-involved, nail biters into a functioning human being capable of keeping at least one half of the arteries of the relationship pumping! I don't even know where my arteries are! All I can say is good luck people, and see Mamma Mia! Don't forget to marvel at the fact that Meryl Streep can do a double backwards half twist and flip all over a set straight out of an Urban Outfitters catalog.