I just read in Alfred Adler's Understanding Human Nature that a person's psyche and action is driven by an ultimate goal, and that that goal is irreversibly influenced by experiences, emotions, failures, and other memories from childhood. And I consider how closely indeed my present ambitions are tied to my trauma and exhilaration as a young child. Now, I feel the only way I can attain happiness is to create something. To form a tangible pillar of my individuality and soul. I need to see my doubt, anger, passion, fear, fascination, and every substance of my mind materialize. Now, in this search to form and mold the outer world, I turn to literature, to books and stories of others, tales with which I can empathize and understand. My hunger for reading is insatiable. Everything from novels, to scientific articles, to textbooks, to philosophical papers, I want it all. I want to absorb it so that I don't miss an ounce of life. I want to share every shape and substance of time, to reflect on all thoughts before me so that I can mold those after. And in all of this, with all the knowledge, as I absorb the mind of others through their literary creations, I feel great anxiety in that I have not made a contribution of my own. Many projects that I saw as the key to overcoming this inaction and dullness have fallen short. My passions flow like a liquid, undulating and turning over, never constant, never culminating into a final insight or enlightenment. Several novels begun on my own, yet my mind drifts to other settings, other plots and themes, other characters and personalities. I can never immerse myself in the fictitious, because my own thoughts are unstable. The worlds I put on paper dissolve, evaporate and disintegrate into the torrent of my consciousness. I am always looking forward to what I will be, what I could possibly become, my intellect, my insight, my ambition, the materialization of all my passions. And it fills me with great anxiety, dread that the person inside of my my never emerge. And I think back to my early life. My parents. Childhood. When everything rested on today, on that ice cream cone after enduring an afternoon of chores, on that TV show that I've waited for all night. These were simple pleasures, now caught up in the mad flood of responsibility and maturation. It makes me so tired to look forward. To never be now. My parents were demanding. Good grades, a clean room, church attendance, moral infallibility. Always left behind in someone's expectations. Enslaved to your own dedication and attachment. I loved them then. Cherished them. Everything I did was to attain their approval. Then I would dismiss any pleasure if only for a few words of gratitude or a compliment. An ovation of some sort. I need approval. I still do. My father was a loner, and now I am a hermit as well. He never shared his thoughts. Compassion, empathy, conversation, all foreign in the house. I made up games to express myself. My imagination was as abundant as the grown-up books I read. The stuff everyone else hated. The big thick books on science, philosophy and religion. When people were still learning their multiplication tables. Science fiction. Fantasy. Anything that made life a little more exciting and unpredictable. And I wanted to escape. Straight A's, top of all my classes, and only a pat on the back. Still not good enough, because no one would share it. They wanted to play outside, go to the bayou, ride bikes, play in puddles, watch a movie, go to a party, raise hell. I just wanted to be alone. With my books. My imagination. And I've never had a close friend, because I was always so afraid of betrayal. So afraid that I would be cast out, and many times I was, when I just wanted to think. Now I don't know if there is much else than my own thoughts, and there is nothing for them to do but bounce around in my head. I hope for someone who can share my mind. Someone who can relate to life, looking back on it, reflecting, not just living it.