I got depressed today while out walking. First of all, I was walking, not running, which is discouraging. I feel fat and slow and old. My weight is at 202 pounds. My largest trousers are too tight around the waistline. My car is broken and I don’t have enough money to get it fixed. And then I’m our walking past all the nice beach houses on Crozier Drive, houses that cost millions of dollars, and I’m realizing that I’ve wasted my life. I stopped and just looked at one house for a long time, and thought to myself, “that’s the kind of house I thought I’d be living in at this point in my life.”

I used to be “smart,” way back in high school. National Merit Scholar, highest pre-SAT and second-highest SAT score in the city my graduating year. All that meant is that I was good at taking multiple choice tests. Once I was out of high school and in the “real world,” even a college version of the “real world,” I did not fit in. I did not know how to function. I certainly had no idea how to succeed.

And here I am, years later, and I still don’t really have a grasp of how to function in the real world. I do not know how to succeed. I read all these blogs by twenty-something world travelers who graduate college and start online businesses and who appear to “have it all”: adequate money to travel and to live well, more than enough free time to enjoy the best of everything – art, music, adventures indoors and out, travel and hiking and biking and staying fit – and a knack for meeting people and making friends everywhere they go.

I got home from my six mile walk – I wanted to go twice that far, but I got tired and discouraged – and took a shower and now I’m drinking a Coca Cola, which at least takes the immediate edge off the despair. That’s the main reason I can’t, or don’t want to, give up drinking cola beverages – they blunt the overwhelming sense of hopelessness. I can understand how people become addicted to drugs, if what drugs do is similar to the effect Coca Cola has for me. That frequent claim that exercise leads to a more positive mindset does not work for me, it never has, even when I was running and exercising regularly a year ago. Exercise leaves me feeling tired and disappointed that I’m not stronger, faster, thinner, better looking, or richer.

I saw an Audi AllRoad Wagon parked in front of one of the nice beachfront estates today. That’s one seriously gorgeous car! I’d love to have one. Instead, I can’t even afford to get my twelve year old Chrysler PT Cruiser fixed. Right now I’m borrowing a relative’s eight year old, beat up and boring Toyota Corolla sedan… and the “service engine” light is now continuously on.

I just finished reading ImpossibleHQ blogger Joel Runyon’s write-ups of the 2014 Patagonia International Ultra-Marathon. Joel Runyon is one of those jobless young guys who started an online business while living in his parents’ basement and three short years later he’s embarking on a yearlong quest to run a marathon on each of the seven continents while raising $175k to build schools in impoverished countries. And here I am, not even able to figure out how to afford to get my stupid car repaired (the repairs will cost around $3k).

I’m gonna go have another glass of icy-cold Coca Cola.