Listening: Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again - Bob Dylan (Covered by Cat Power)

Thinking about the future is giving me a headache. Trying to plan for it is rapidly turning it from a headache into a never ending migraine. It looms over me like a giant hovering mushroom cloud; only the bomb has not yet gone of... its waiting 'til June. I continue to have no concrete idea of what I want to do after graduation and as I lurch from one idea to a completely different other, I feel like my life is being tossed around like a lone leaf in the extremely harsh gales battering the UK at the moment. Amongst my feelings of ever encroaching despair and frustration, I can't help but feeling resentful towards the system. There are two systems, both at fault; the system of education which is soon to be my past and the future system of the job market. But they combine into the ever more horrendous and homogenous system that is modern life in general.

The education system, which I have been in for over 15 years now is totally flawed as it expects you to know what you want to do with your life when you're 15 years old, and choosing your a-levels. Yet, at that age you're not going to have any experience of the working world and how the fuck do you know what you want to be, when there is virtually no information or guidance provided. Case in point, I did not know then that I would really like to be a forensic scientist. Thus I did not take any science a-levels, so now I have no way in hell of being able to pursue that career without taking adult-learning courses in a-level biology, which would cost thousands of pounds and take two years! Then the system of the job market and application process is totally flawed too. It expects graduates to have experience in the field they're applying, and to also have been involved in a trillion and one things during university along with studying to get a first class degree. The irony of this is, as me and my flat mate discussed the other day; those who take up lots of extracurricular activities are more often than not those who are geeky, overachievers with a low social life. Therefore, what employers take to be a sign of having great team-working, communication and inter-personal skills; more often than not means that person has the social skills of a Nazi leper, and are completely socially retarded. Those who can sell things well, network and schmooze to the max are usually found in bars, socialising non stop with no time for geek society! 

My encounters thus far and thoughts on my future have led me to thinking about modern society as a whole - that along with my rather apt modern-political thought module, which is incredibly interesting and looks at critical theory of the modern world along with the infamous post-modernism. The ideas of Marcuse, a German theorist, on capitalist society, the pervasion of a homogenous culture and the need for counter-cultural movements, have struck a chord with me. I feel that the society of today has become so concerned with selling everything to us, in order to continue its capitalist dominance, that even life itself is something which they try to sell us now. Not literally of course, but a certain way of life, is foisted upon us, sold to us as a brand or an ethos. We are told what a good life is, what a successful life is... the way we live, the career we choose, if one at all, is all shaped by the pressures of society. 

I find it all too much, and want to scream my lungs out at the futility of it all. Who is to say what a good way of life is, or what a successful future is? WHO? I ask is the judge of all these wonderful benchmarks by which we should live. Why are you only deemed successful if you, say, earn vast amounts of money and are able to buy nice shiny commodities? Why is the ability to purchase and consume better and higher quantities of possessions a sign of you leading a good life, of having made it?! Made it to what I wonder!? - having a rather meaningless and vacuous life; one that has managed to cause more waste than others. It all leads me to question why a mapped out corporate career is good, why should I want that? ... I DON'T! I'm made to feel like that's what I should do, cause that's the way to success and goodness. To stability and a good retirement. Why do I want to be thinking of retirement now, who says I want stability, a marriage and a family? Why can't I just have random careerless jobs that allow me to be how I want and live comfortably, whilst having the time to myself that I want - why is that so frowned upon?! 

Of course, there are no answers. There is no ubiquitous judge of what is better and what is not. It wouldn't be right if there was, it's just that it feels as if there is, and I'm being judged badly. 

I know I'm sounding clichéd here, but the more I contemplate what to do and the more I research into opportunities, the more I run head first into a solid brick wall. Every single job, graduate scheme, placement, internship, volunteering scheme, postgrad degree that I look into I feel as if I can't do it. I don't have any work experience other than shop work and I haven't done much in the way of extracurricular stuff whilst here. Not because I didn't want to, I just wasn't attracted by anything on offer. Thus, the more I read all the terrible jargon filled job briefs and what is required, I become increasingly unsure of my abilities and feel totally inadequate for most of what is on offer. I wonder how it has come to this?! I've never felt like this before in regard to my academic studies, I've always done well, pretty much top of the class and I'm intelligent. I can adapt and learn new things very easily. BUT - this terrible fear grips me when I think of myself in a real proper job, with responsibilities and people depending on me, where I'll have to give presentations and produce results ... I can do it all, I know I can, but then the fear of failure sets in and that's it ... I've never really failed in anything I've done before. I may not have been the best, but I never failed and I'm fixated on the fact that I will. Thus, it stops me for applying for anything at all - and I'm right back to where I started. 

I need help! I need someone to talk to, rather than just typing it all into this blank box or scrawling it in the lined pages of my diary. I need someone to tell me it'll be ok - except it won't and the more I think, the more the migraine comes back and I feel as if I'm slipping into a black abyss of despair. 

Confusion is a seemingly permanent mindset at the moment not only on this subject but on my personal life too, friends and relationships, and what I want against what I'm getting from them. Not that I have a relationship so to speak of, and being single for over two years now, whilst in the prime place that is university, is starting to grate. Though, I'm not really a date person at all, so it's pretty much my fault. The point being, that I love my friends but with some of them its a constant battle; a war between me & my pride. I feel as though I'm harassing them or annoying them, in order to just hang out. Therefore, half the time I'm screaming at myself to just speak out & tell them, or just stop bothering with them all together, because I have too much pride to keep on being the one chasing them up. I've had this experience with people all my life and its always led to hurt, so this time I know that I should just move on and not become so attached - keep convincing myself that it's their loss - which works for about five minutes.