This morning, I woke up to a stark realization. Last night I had a dream which had some of my really old friends and some of my current friends -- Alex Mills, Austin Lerch, Charity, and a few other people I can't remember anymore (mainly because I had to rush off to class and in the meantime I forgot most of the dream -- grr). For some reason I think everybody was playing baseball, and I showed up in the middle of the game and just walked up to the plate and started batting. I think later I started getting dizzy and that's when I woke up, but that's not the whole point of this dream.

I've realized that college isn't really the place for me. Even though I've been here for 5 quarters now and I seem to have fit in OK, something always felt off. I guess I've been trying to deny the fact that school has never been the right place for me. Don't get me wrong, I've made friends here at Stanford, and some of my classes have been really fun; it's just that I get into this rut where I start watching TV or start procrastinating on my computer, all because of the impending schoolwork that I have to do, and it just degrades the whole essence of being here. Furthermore, I just never have any time for the things that I *REALLY* want to do, and I've never really kept up with the friendships that I once had. It's kind of depressing just thinking about that.

So I think the best thing for me at this point in my life is to drop out of college, or at least take a year off from school, because it's really started to chip away at me. Graduating early is a possibility (since I do already have 118 units or so racked up), but I think that would just put too much pressure on me at a time when I don't need that. I'll probably decide to finish this year up and stay for this quarter since it's already started, but 1 or 2 years more I can't handle.

I know it probably sounds crazy, and something to which I haven't really given much thought, but I really do think it is the best thing for me. I still have my job at SLAC lined up for me in the summer, and I'm sure I could probably find some other place where I could work -- becoming a professional programmer might not be a bad idea after all. I could also potentially devote my time to creating shareware products to supplement a part-time job, and live off of that (haha I'll be the next Bill Gates, except I'll drop out of Stanford instead of Harvard!). It's all up in the air at this point, because I still am having issues with making programming my job. I'll figure something out; that is something of which I'm sure.

It all seems quite strange knowing that I'm not going to be coming back here next fall. I wonder what I'll be doing then, instead of college. I guess we'll all see.