"Use proven methods, avoid shortcuts."

Besides being the Faunon (about which I know nothing except that it's probably related to Faunus, the goat-legged wilderness god), today is Lincoln's birthday. Not being one to celebrate the birthdays of dead presidents, I did not properly honor this occasion. I did, however, honor another birthday: that of Charles Darwin (who was a president, but of the Council of the Geographical Society, so I'm letting it slide). I honored this great day by not taking out the trash, thus allowing evolution to continue in that location.

Happy birthday, Darwin, I'm sure you don't look a day over 198.

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So...I had a sort of meltdown today, after the Health care seminar ended. My RA happened to be wandering around and he came in to talk about something going on this week and he noticed I had been crying, so he talked to me about it. I'm calm, now-- not over the crisis, but not crying, either... Still, this is the blog entry I wrote mid-meltdown.

I can't do this. I can't be a doctor. I can't go to med school and I can't do the career I always expected I'd do. It was never real to me, the idea of me as a doctor-- it was this distant, intangible idea where I had more marketable skills than a little bit more intelligence than Average Joe.

I don't really want to go into medicine. If I could have any career in the world, I'd write bestselling novels or screenplays or the scripts to comic books, or someone would pay me to draw whatever I wanted. I wouldn't be in science, I wouldn't be dealing with people every day...

There are two worlds that I live in at the same time. One of them is the real world, and the other is the one in my head. In the real world I'm a painfully shy, unattractive, reasonably intelligent but completely antisocial college student with no useful skills who's too afraid of human interaction to do what it takes to gain those skills. I want to do so much, I'm interested in so many things, but every time I learn about something new I want to do I find out that it requires social skills and I seize up. There was a woman at the Health care seminar today talking about international research opportunities and I was thinking, "oh, that sounds cool" and she mentioned that part of it was finding faculty mentors and convincing them to support you, and then going abroad and working with the professors one-on-one and with the natives, and my first reaction was "well, so much for that idea, I could never have the confidence for that." In the real world I'm hopeless and relatively worthless and have very few prospects, career-related or relationship-wise.

In the world in my head, I could be a doctor. Or a physician's assistant, or a lawyer, or a politician. In that world my books would actually make money or my sketches could actually sell or I'm attractive, thin, and sociable enough to marry someone rich and powerful and spend my life organizing charity functions and raising kids. Heck, in that world I can befriend a centaur or walk on the moon or have some important role in the destiny of the earth. In that world, I've lived my life; I'm not some sheltered girl from suburbia who thinks she's capable of independence.

I can't tell my mother about this little crisis, because she'll tell me to major in creative writing or something I love, and then I'll have to point out that my writing is mediocre and I refuse to be a starving artist. I'm beginning to see the power of the lines between dreams and reality. I will never be an artist or a professional writer or a politician; I've known this for years. I'm beginning to wonder if I need to add "doctor" to the list.