Surprise news: I woke up today and hated myself. Very surprising. I looked around at all the stuff I hadn't done around here, and it was pretty disheartening. I haven't been keeping up on my cleaning, my reading for school, or anything like that. I've been spending too much money, to boot.

 

But then my homework comes along and makes me feel better. Really very strange. In my Social Issues course, we're taking a look at critical thinking. To this end, we're reading a lot of arguments about the state of our culture at present. A lot of this stuff is pretty gloom and doom, and unsurprisingly, that cheered me up.

 

If this latest book is correct about literacy rates and the state of intellectualism (circa 2000), I really shouldn't beat myself up so much. I worry about not being good enough intellectually, but it sounds like if I read more than one book a year, I'm ahead of the curve! Of course, this is no time to rest on my laurels... Then again, when I inevitably fall short of my goals, I'll feel a little less terrible.