career determinism, please step back, turn around, and walk away. i do not want to face your derisive laughter.

when i got home after the last cringe, i read the beginning of my very first diary (ages 10–11), which i'd previously overlooked as boring, and realized there's some stuff to be mined in there. apparently i was a hypercritical little shit. also, i copyedited my own diary. when i was 11. i can tell the corrections by their different ink color—and it's not just a spelling fix here and there, but things like end parentheses and even pronoun consistency. i find this far more troubling than "The reason I think Sarah B--- is being especially mean to me is because she's jealous that I have parents that are home, and Bill and I are good friends."