I feel self-doubt just crashing down around me. It's fucking annoying.

I admit to have created/exaggerated my writing skills by referencing them all the time, but I still feel that there was some base of truth. I may have told a lot of people that I was a good writer. They may have believed me without reading anything I had written, but still I thought there was something behind my boasts. I guess not.

I'm not even comfortable with the thought that I'm just decent. If there is a selection of 29 writers I really thought I would be at the top, easily top 10. The chance that I was #15 of 14 selections offers me nothing. I want to be in the top couple. I know I can research. Research is what I fucking do. I thought I was a neither a researcher or a writer. I hoped I was simultaneously both, and that I was above average at both. Clearly I was wrong. Clearly I can't handle rejection, but this school tends to do this shit often.

"We strongly encourage rejected applicants to apply again." Ehh Ehhh FUCK YOU.

I need to delve into capitalism. The only ridiculously obvious thing I have learned about life is that "things happen to people." Good stuff happens to bad people, bad stuff to good, and sometimes the other two combinations occur too (but fuck those). I repeat: I need to delve into capitalism.

There is nothing to be gained by sitting around twidling your thumbs like I have for almost 20 years. You may have a slightly firmer grasp on the nature of reality and perhaps even human nature. Fuck I probably know a little more about ethics than other people too, but I have got nothing to show for it. Writing and thinking and absolving ignorance has proven useless to me and those around me. I have gained nothing but angst, and I have boatloads of it now.

This should not be my reaction. I should not run in the opposite direction whenever an obstacle impedes my path. But fuck commitment. I was committed to that shit anyway. I was doing it for the free booze. First I got the big fat DING for the Regents scholarship. A few months later I got another DING for the TAP. Now it's been DING DING DING. In boxing that's a fucking knock out--end of match. UCLA is dancing around with its arm up to the sky while I'm shuffled off to the nurse's office.

The worst part is that now I have nothing to do. I had put a lot of weight in that plan, never imagining that it wouldn't come through (double negative, maybe that's why I didn't make the cut). There is no plan b. There is no possible plan b. Even if I do mentorship it will only take up 8, maybe 12 hours. My classes are difficult, sure, but not time consuming. And now I have no way to meet anybody. I'm not going to do anything politcal, because that shit is retarded.

I'm done. This has been an lesson in how not to write.