09.22.03 - 9:16 p.m.

I think the problem is that I don't want to be a journalist. Not that you can really call what I do at my job 'journalism.' "Checking your sources does not mean finding another website that says the same," Dakota Smith says, but that's more or less what I do every day. I make shit up, writing up an amalgam of opinions from psychologists, therapists and other so-called experts. Whatever the bosses want, I can find an opinion to match online. And if after talking to them, the quotes don 't exactly toe the bosses' party line, just take it out of quotes. Or hell, change the quotes. That's what my editor does. It's sick. And it's laziness. And it's what I do because it's easier than fighting it every day.

And who's to say this doesn't happen everywhere? Wouldn't it just be simpler to sell out to a corporation, writing the intra-office newsletter? Toeing the company line instead of worrying about holding on to my integrity? I'm not cut out for this reporter shit anyway. My paralysing shyness, which I should have realized was a detriment to my burgeoning 'career' before I even set foot in grad school, is stopping me from doing a lot of my job anyway.

I have no answers. I only wonder why I continue to wake up in the morning and go to a job that makes me cry and vomit almost daily.