I'm probably depressed right now. I feel I should state that directly, even though I have probably been muttering this conclusion from the darker corners of my thoughts for some time now. As a result of this (potential?) depression, I won't promise eloquent words. Instead, I can fairly guess this post will be some rambling, a bit of personal insight, finished with some gesture in the direction of self-therapy.

I feel like my generation is the generation of inadequacy. Maybe others before us have felt like we do now, but I doubt it. Many of us are walking away from college with enormous debt loads and a degree that is barely worth the paper it was printed on. This is not to say that we haven't grown into wiser, more thoughtful people in that time in school, but just to say that the degree isn't what it was worth, and the world isn't what it used to be. We have the urgent sense that we must make a name for ourselves, that we must somehow cover up the failure of our education with either a) more education, or b) proof of major success in some other feature of our lives. Though "either" suggests two options, I'd suggest a third, c) a frantic search for some way to pay off debt while clinging to the fetal hope that we can retain at least some dignity while doing so.

I am no different than my generation. I feel woefully inadequate for any goal that I want to pursue and worse still, I'm just wise enough to know that the advice "just pursue your dreams" is sorry fare for a life philosophy in this age. I'm thinking of pursuing a legal education right now, with the express hope of becoming a law professor. But the fact of the matter is unless I go to a top 5 or so school, my hopes of law academia are very low. Worse still, I couldn't leave one of those institutions with less than a quarter million dollars in debt or so, give or take a few thousand. Those institutions where I could get a JD paid for would leave me unable to get to academia. It's a sort of damned if I do, damned if don't feeling.

In a book a read in high school, (the name eludes me), the author described a scenario where a young man sort of just wandered through life, supported by others, but uninterested in the options that the world had to offer. Eventually that young man killed himself because there was nothing worthwhile in the world for him. I have the opposite problem. There are so many tasks that I find exciting and fascinating, but they seem so unreachable. Imagine being told that despite months of study and practice, drive, passion, and energy, you discovered that you missed out on a chance for something amazing because your GPA or standardized test score was too low. It pains me that so many good minds are turned away from specific tasks because they simply couldn't retain their vocabulary words, or they risked a hard science class because they wanted to know the ways that chemistry works. A terrible shame.

Okay, I'm losing steam. I've said what I need to say, expressed some angst and I feel better for it. In favor of the promised self-therapy, I will now say 5 things that I like about myself.

I like my dark sense of humor. Pain is terrible, all people suffer some agony in their lives. I believe that there is great humor in this fact and sometimes our sufferings are taken far too seriously.

I like the care that I take in believing trustworthy things. I acknowledge the irony in this statement, given that if I am depressed, the depression no doubt skews my ability to develop trustworthy beliefs. Nonetheless, I take great care in having trustworthy and defensible beliefs in religion, methodology, and ethics.

I like my growing willingness to test my boundaries. To stop being Christian if the evidence points away, to accept that some people do drugs and that's okay, to move to a foreign country in the first year of my marriage. These are good things. (As a side note, this ability and willingness may be a helpful lever to deal with my depression).

I like that I like anime and sci-fi. I have no shame and this is a beautiful thing.

I like my increasing willingness to be wrong about things. Marriage does this to you, makes you want to be better, and to compromise more. Anyone who knows me will know this is a weakness of mine, so I can certainly compliment myself on the strides I've made in this area.

Alright. Time for bed.