Today is the very first day of what I predict will be a massively long month. January will be the month of my mother's chemo. It'll be the beginning of the middle semester of my three year master's program, and I will be cripplingly busy. It began with me driving home alone in my car in the middle of a blizzard yelling happy new year to no one. Since this is my first entry I'll add a biography. I'm 24 years old, I'm female, I have a long-term boyfriend, two sisters a father and a mother with colon cancer. Hi.

Matthew always errs on the side of too little booze, I prefer to risk having too much. When it's just the two of us and we have decided to stay in to get drunk and play cards or video games he thinks a six pack will do. I want a twelve pack and a bottle of southern comfort. I end up arguing that if we don't finish it tonight then we can finish it later, it's an investment in a future night. I always win. The argument confuses me though, can someone really choose to drink only a finite amount?

A meditation on a mediport: A mediport is a semi-permanent tube inserted into a vein near to your heart run up along your collar bone and ending in a funnel-like opening just below your right shoulder blade. After it is surgically implanted they pull the skin back over the port. The genius of this system is that when they wish to give you your chemo they can puncture through this covering of skin and dump the poisons directly through the tube and into your hearth, thus ensuring the most efficient distribution of toxins. It is sophisticated and barbaric at once.

My father and I had four hours to spend alone together while we waited out my mom's treatment. I suspect he was dreading it as much as I was. After about an hour he began to ask me if my younger sister Kristin was going to show up. When was she going to get there? I finally went out to stand in the New England cold and called her She said she wasn't coming to the hospital because it seemed "very very boring." Dad took us siblings out to lunch. I sat in the back seat, it was more comfortable.

I love The West Wing, at least the first 5 seasons. I love Star Trek. Next Generation. Voyager. I love my car. 35 miles to the gallon is a start. I love cigarettes and licorice and twizzlers, which are not licorice. I love my oral fixation. I love vodka on the rocks, southern comfort on the rocks, beer. I love arguing. I love being the oldest of three girls. I love taking music off of the internet. I love that I love my job. I love classrooms and a really good lecture. I love keeping busy and sleeping in late.

I'm such an insufferable know-it-all. I micro-manage every aspect of your life from the way you order coffee to how you deal with your sister. I am right that she has a mental illness. She isn't healthy and I know that. Still, just because I study the psyche doesn't mean I rule everyones. Though you know I can't stand it when you Throw your anger towards me in a tidal wave. I can't build a strong enough barrier. You take me over with it. Our relationship lacks joy. Just because you hate your life lately doesn't mean I hate mine.

Ode to a wetlands memorial mall: Wasn't there a pond here not too long ago? Don't I remember dragonflies lilies turtles and grass? Now I see a Borders Home Depot and a Mikes. You can't stop the world moving and driving right over nature. We need our department stores. We need our steakhouses, video game, exercise equipment. Who was ever helped by a giant swarm of mosquitoes? What has a little wetlands Ever done for me? So now instead of birds and trees I go to Bed Bath and Beyond I'll shop for a green teapot In memory of frogs.

I've been working all day. I woke up, got ready and drove to work. Today I have a 12 hour shift. I haven't thought about anything, done anything beyond sit at this desk in this shitty chair in this shitty office. That's probably why I love this job. I don't do anything, and there's internet access. The only highlight of today is that it is a sunday. Postsecret day. I love postsecret. I know everyone does these days but I really can't drop this obsession. I should send in one of my own someday, unfortunately I'm not at all artistic.

When I was in high school my drama club did a dinner theater and I was cast as the ‘naughty nurse'. I went out and got a nurses dress, fishnet stockings, white shoes, practiced my lines every day. It didn't occur to me that the drama teacher was grooming me to sexualize me. Maybe it should have. I was ok with this and the resulting behavior for years. Now I'm angry. I can't explain it, and I wouldn't want to. What could I really say about something like that? All I know is, this bastard's going to be a principle.

I should be in charge of the world. I wish I could be a superhero, comic book mutant, or president. The world would run so much more smoothly if I was its overlord. I'm sure there's more than a touch of megalomania there, especially considering I can't even talk to strangers without all but passing out. I could never give a speech to the eager masses. I think many of us are a mixture of narcissism and anxiety disorder. Oddly this combination is probably what constitutes being mentally healthy. Soon I'll have a degree that'll allow me to judge that.

A typical report to my boss at this hotel: So, the guy staying in room 218 called down again, this time his microwave isn't working. I was going to get him a new one but it turns out he was using it wrong, then he needed me to tell him how to use the phone again. The ceiling is leaking again in 205 so I put a bucket under it, but this is a pretty big one. 110 still hasn't paid for the week, and the police came by again this afternoon, this time about 216. Child abuse charges again.

Oddly, today someone from our hotel was arrested for child abuse. I never imagined taking a job as a desk clerk in a sleazy motel would present so many ethical dilemmas. When do I honor my hotel and when do I call the police? If I suspect a parent of being high do I report it? What if a man staying here drives away so drunk he forgets his headlights? What if I hear fighting that might be spouse abuse? If someone tells me they're suicidal? If they threaten me? Someone else? I don't understand my duty to the public.

I wonder now why I began this 100 words thing anyway. It's not as if I have terrific insights to share with the general population, or great thoughts of my own I just absolutely need to release from my head. I have nothing. I'm just sending 100 words times 31 of empty meaningless filler out into cyberspace. I'm simply helping to contribute the growing amount of useless crap cluttering up the internet and the general psyches of humanity. I will never expand a mind, including my own, this way. My submissions amount to word pollution. I'm littering in the internet.

Ok, yeah, I'm a hypochondriac. For me the question is why isn't everybody. My mom had an annoying rash, it turned into a slight fever and chills. In six months her harmless rash closed off her throat and was making her tremble all day. I wouldn't have associated these symptoms with colon cancer, but it was. My grandfather felt sleepier and more irritable, and he had leukemia. These supposedly simple symptoms can be indicative of a condition that will cripple you Every little body sensation could be nothing, or could kill you. Living is the least reliable aspect of life.

I hate waking up in the hotel I work at. I always pick a particularly crappy room somewhere close to the office, and that's a big part of the problem. The room I stayed in had a window stuck open so that the snow kept blowing in. I covered it with a towel but it didn't help. I showered in a room that smells like old mouse. When I was "clean"I walked across the busy street in a blizzard to buy a breakfast because we aren't getting enough business at the motel to put out the free one anymore.

When I look back on my years in that apartment in college I can almost see the anxiety beginning in the way that I needed to structure my leisure time. They seemed like happy times, but when people visited I needed each second to have a purpose or I would get stressed. I loved it anyway. Standing and sitting around the kitchen, the stove. French toast and coffee, "everybody wants to be naked and famous-, long talks about ritual, religion, women and their changing role. Feminism, religion, star trek. Always, however, with an undercurrent of panic. Strange it seemed normal.

I dyed my hair a few days ago, I've been wanting to for a few weeks but put it off for various reasons. I'm happy with it. I had my first day of class today and for some reason every time I saw someone I know they would say "wow you dyed your hair!"and I would have to say "oh, yeah"and touch my head as if somehow, despite the fact that it's now the color of a tomato, I had forgotten that it used to be a mousy blond/brown. Why would I feel I needed to do that?

Oh, shit, 100 words. I very nearly forgot. Ok, oooook, quick, a topic. And I just dumped water all in my keyboard. School has started again, and the thing I think I'll miss the most is television. TV is how I get through work and now I really need to forget about it and do my homework. I don't know what my problem with homework is. I love the topics, the work itself isn't that bad, but for some reason I have to fight to make myself do every little thing. Also, it rained today. In January. That doesn't happen.

I really resent that my mother is sick. It sucks all to hell. I hate waking up in the middle of the night to find her shuffling around the kitchen wearing that hideous fanny pack containing her chemo shaking with heartburn and yellow complexion, coming home from work at midnight and finding her lying on the living room floor because she can't sleep with dad with her fanny pack on. We have to have a hazmat cleanup kit in the bathroom in case chemo spills. People who don't live here don't understand the small emotional shots. Not even my sisters.

I only ever notice I've been stressed in hindsight. I went to the city to go to my internship and was there about an hour before I had to go home to pick up my mom to bring her to the hospital to get her chemo unhooked. She thought she could drive herself but she woke up so sick this morning and so tired that she was afraid she would fall asleep driving. She looked like hell all day. It wasn't that long ago that I had a very normal mother. I'm trying to get my masters for god's sake.

One hundred words my ass. I don't wanna think that hard. I don't want to have ideas, I would prefer not to have a brain. I don't want to be a girl. I want to be a big steroid abusing linebacker with a drinking problem. I'm tired of people thinking that if I'm nice to them once I am in some way beholden to them. Men could not possibly see the hundreds of ways they make you feel weaker. I want to lead the food chain for a change. Are men ever scared walking alone across an empty parking lot?

I think I'll need to have an affair before I'm too old. I know enough about myself to know that I'll never be happy with any life that is mine. Just like I believe that nothing I do can ever be called successful because if I achieved it it must have been too easy to be a success. Not that I don't think anyone who does as well as I do is unsuccessful, it's just that I know for a fact that I can never be as good as I could be. Therefore any man with me must be unacceptable.

There seemed like so much time today and now it's over. It always goes that way. My day is gone and I'm miserable. Thanks for that. Thanks for making me miserable again. I would say less than half the time we spend together we have fun. I don't need much but I do need to have fun with you. My one need and it's very rarely met. You always apologize but if I accuse you of treating me badly you get angry. Then why apologize? You're the perfect man really, but you are a shitty partner. You make me sad.

I'm not entirely incompetent. I get by. I wouldn't say I'm doing terrifically, but I am managing to meddle my way through somehow. My boyfriend is smart, cute, thoughtful, articulate, and more. My parents are both currently still alive, my sisters like me well enough, and I like them more or less. I've got a couple of pretty good friends, likable classmates. Nothing is perfect though. I'm too busy to see my friends, family, too shy to talk to my classmates, I'm not overly bright, and he makes me sad instead of happy. I can't tell, is my life successful?

What is charisma, character, social skills? Why is it that one guy begging me to take a check will seriously piss me off but another will steal my sympathy out from me. Where do I fit on the scale? What is it to be charismatic? I don't understand what draws people. I think that's why I'm so afraid of crowds, new people. I don't understand what people want, what repulses them, so I'm really not sure which I'm doing. I don't trust myself to get socializing correct, so naturally I do it all wrong. Mostly I want to be wanted.

The real reason I know that I will have an affair at some point is that I really love to be self-destructive. I enjoy certain soft drugs, being drunk, cutting myself, masochistic behavior. The problem is I don't like to smoke often, I can't take drugs anymore, and I can't be drunk more than once a month. I still have a self-destructive impulse but no outlet. I will cheat for drama, because it'll be ‘bad' but also because I know my boyfriend will stay anyway. Probably forgive me the same week. I just can't leave myself alone for too long.

I feel like there is something missing from me. When I think of other human beings I think of them sharply, like high definition tv, like pictures of clown fish on blue anemone backgrounds, like chrome. They are existing, living. When I think of myself in the world I see myself shot through those Martha Stewart filters that make things fuzzy. I'm like headlights in fog. I'm not just out of focus, I'm less real. I exist in a smaller way than the people around me. How then can I realistically put my needs first? My needs are filtered, unclear.

I have nothing to say and I'm sick of saying I have nothing to say. I've been an empty void for my whole existence. I've never had a decent thought of my own, an inspiration. In a career where they emphasize the need to publish papers to stay recognized I feel I've failed already by virtue of being unqualified to write. And yet I'm at it again. I'm sitting here trying to drag some sludge of wit from the tip of my brainstem. There's nothing so I say empty and I hear empty echo back, so empty's what I write.

Well, two days left to go and I finally forgot a day. I got involved in a politics discussion and totally forgot. So I guess I'll talk politics. I don't understand why there isn't any uproar, why there isn't proper rioting. We've lost our liberty, we've become oppressors, there is nothing left for the terrorists to take from us. Corruption is more common than discussion. When we sacrifice our freedoms, our constitution in order to protect our freedom and constitution who are we kidding? The world isn't fooled. Only 49% of our population manage to miss all this obvious stuff.

I love religion, I wish I wasn't an atheist. There's nothing more stirring to my soul than a ritual. Candles, chanting, the smells, the food. Prayer is deeply healing, but who would I pray to? All religions hold traditions that are beautiful and enlightening, similar to each other, unique. I want to be a member of all religions, but I simply can't believe in any of them. The practices are appealing to me, but there is simply nothing for me in faith. I can't believe and I can't trust. I can't risk turning my life over to a day dream.

Ok, now it's over. One full month. I wish I could write a paragraph about all that I have learned about myself and my writing style, but unfortunately I'm almost positive I've learned nothing at all. Except, of course, that coming up with a paragraph every day is very difficult. Also that I am a far more empty person than I had anticipated. I'm sorry the month is up but relieved also. I think I'll take a couple of months, finish school and maybe think about developing a mind. That might be a pleasant and probably unfamiliar experience for me.