wine therapy -- don't worry, happy ending

I seriously need to get a handle on my nuroses about the future, life in SF, etc. Since Sunday or so I've been in this super-deep funk about everything, avoided people at school, not doing schoolwork, or even enjoying the time off from homework. It's really ridiculous, and seemed a lot like what I was feeling this summer -- not reassuring. Not necessarily unjustified, but I need to be focusing on the extremely positive aspects of my experience here instead of worrying about what I little direct control over (i.e. the future, especially the details). But as I bump up against certain intellectual limits (temporary or otherwise) and can't handle as many projects as I should be working on (e.g. schoolwork plus writing), it can be frustrating.

Among other things, I've been brooding over whether I really gave journalism/publishing/that sort of thing a good enough go at it, and whether I'm being stupid studying something else instead right now and having trouble finding time to work on writing projects that I'd really like to do. Also, this econ stuff is just really hard! I'm not the only one having trouble, but usually schoolwork or research projects or whatever just sort of make sense. But in econ I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around some of this stuff.

So all in all I've been wondering if I shouldn't just go home and work and try to make things happen with journalism/publishing, but at the same time it'd be lame to quit school just because it's gotten hard. It'll be that much more satisfying to finish if it's this hard at the beginning. It's character building, right? Also, I do actually enjoy learning about econ, I just don't know if I'm going to use it. I'm also kind of afraid that I will use it and start working for the man or something, or give up on anything to do with words or publishing. Not that I can hope to accurately predict even a faint outline of the future. And actually, if I'm that into publishing and whatnot when I'm done, I'll obviously find a way to keep doing it, otherwise I'll drop it.

But on a happier note, I just got home from a really nice dinner with most of the people in my masters (12 of us went out for couscous). Turns out that three of the guys (myself included) were in relationships that ended almost simultaneously. There was also a mini-battle between people on the left and the guy who admitted that he was centrist. All in good fun of course, and the right-leaning guy would be a pretty liberal person in the US, so that whole thing was kind of surreal. Then there were a few pitchers of wine, wedding photos on an iPod, correcting my pronunciation of iPod (in real French, it should be pronounced ee-pod, but no one does), and just having a great time hanging out and eating.

It was exactly the kind of evening I needed to get me back into life here. It would be so stupid for me to spend two years moping about, only to 'finally' get back to the US and realize that I'd wasted my time, then mope around San Francisco about that. So, not that any of those people are reading this, but a big thanks goes out to the crew in économie de développement international!