I am annoying the shit out of myself.

OK, I'm stressed. Finals are next week, I had graded homework due today, and a job interview this afternoon. And I couldn't sleep last night because of the wind and ended up lying awake half the night worrying about my mortgage, and what if I can only make $35,000 a year as a lawyer or something, and why did I ever quit my job anyway, and what was I thinking, and who would ever hire me, and do I make sense to anyone anywhere, and let me tell you, these were the absolute BEST thoughts to be subjecting myself to for 2 or 3 vulnerable hours in the middle of the night the day before an interview for an unpaid internship. Super.

I think the whole chain got started because the wind woke me up, but I didn't know the wind woke me up, and the wind always makes me anxious about my house because I fear it might blow away. So I woke up with diffuse house anxiety that attached itself the mortgage rather than to the wind.

On the upside, or maybe the downside, or maybe just the side, the interview was interesting. But weird. Encouraging: the interviewer seemed to understand my resume, and see me as qualified, and kind of asked why I wasn't looking for a paid job for the summer, implying that my resume looked like that of someone who could maybe get a paid job their 1L year. (Hmm. I may have new plans for the second half of my spring break now...) Weird: the interviewer asked me how much I made in my last job. And I answered, and then we discussed how I think I'll probably make less than that after I finish law school. Discouraging: I felt kind of diffuse and ill-prepared, and regretted not spending more of my insomniac hours researching the employer. And it was odd to be simultaneously recognized as at least a former adult and professional, but basically a child in the context of the law. The interviewer straddled that chasm with ease, but I still felt kind of awkward and senseless.

So now I'm second-guessing every pause or imperfect statement I made in the interview. Did I seem unfocused? Did I seem like a dilettante? Did I seem like a huge hippie? Am I an irredeemable idiot who no one will ever give a job, even an unpaid job, ever again?

I think the infantilizing nature of schooling has begun to take hold of me a bit too much. How do I stop this?

And also, in the past few weeks I'm just sick of my own anxiety, and mightily annoyed that, although I have worked my ass off to try to find a way of not constantly living as if the world is a hostile place and a fit object of terror, I will never be an effortlessly happy person, and I constantly, constantly, constantly have to work at this. I will be balanced for a while, and then like some kind of tentacle winding itself around my leg, the anxiety will start tugging at me. Good routines are not always enough. 8 hours of sleep and yoga and trying to be present and truthful is not always enough. The chronicness of the whole thing is depressing me. For the past couple of years I've been able to be philosophical about that--it's the hand we're dealt, the life we've got, we're an oddly-wired, jerry-built kind of species that way, blah blah blah. But lately I'm tired, and I just wish things were different.

And also: It annoys the shit out of me that it's only taken SIX MONTHS for law school to strip me of all my confidence about my ability to make a living and survive in the world. (Hmm. Maybe that belongs in the "law school is like a bad boyfriend" entry.)