If you'd observed the minor courtesy of informing your employer that you were quitting, I'd have had much sympathy for you. In the event, I feel you are utterly self-indulgent - if you feel you just can't observe these minor courtesies of life, then that may well be the issue that should occupy your prime attention:

What makes you feel so special about yourself that you cannot even be reasonably courteous to someone who has done you the favour of employing you, paying you, etc?

It may well have been an utterly boring job, far below your wondrous capabilities - but still, the person who employed you must have had some minimum expectations of you. The least you could have done was to inform her/him that you were quitting.

Then, having flunked the first test in life, your life, you've put your problem to Cary Tennis (who has indulged you much further than you deserve, IMHO). Several Salon readers have come up with excellent thoughts and suggestions. (In particular, the suggestions of Cosmic Mojo make pretty good sense to me - but then I'm not you, and those ideas probably do not appeal to you). If none of those ideas from Salon readers of your problem suit you, you may like to try out the following:

Create a 'Mission' for yourself - something along the following lines would do:

"To discover just what it is I should do with myself, with my life"

Then ask yourself the obvious 'trigger question' about that Mission:

"What, in my opinion - and in the opinions of any whose thoughts I value, e.g. some Salon readers; others - are the THINGS TO I SHOULD DO to discover just what it is I should do with myself, with my life?"

Put down your responses to that trigger question - then put those into responses into 'contributory order' i.e., find out just how they may contribute to each other and to your Mission. There's some useful software freely available that can help you do this work - write to me at gs (underscore) chandy (at) yahoo (dot) com, and I shall be happy to enable you to download the software, no fees or charges of any kind.

As you work on doing this (putting those ideas into 'contributory order'), you will find a whole lot more ideas coming to mind, a whole lot of difficulties and barriers, for instance. It's not difficult to learn how to handle those barriers and difficulties - the software helps you to do this quite easily.

My best wishes to you. But do get yourself out of this self-indulgent whining of yours, pronto!

[Or, maybe you'd prefer to do something along the lines of those 10 young men who just shot up Mumbai with AK-47s, grenades and bomba (leaving some 173 dead, 500-odd injured, many still critical)]. That's one kind of way of coping with the terribleangst such as you are feeling!

-- GSC

GSC

Carry a gun.

Shoot the motherfucking big toe of his intruding foot right off.

Just kidding! Be reasonable. Don't get too uptight about it. Yes, it is an infringement of your personal rights - but it is a relatively minor issue. Explain the situation to your neighbour if you really object about it.

Or help the observant Jewish person in, if you can bring yourself to do that. (From the tone of your letter, I think you may have some difficulty in "bringing yourself to do that" [and then forgetting about it - you may possibly seethe with rage for hours after that]). In any case, I'm sure it happens only rarely, so just forget about it (unless it does really represent a serious threat to your security - in which case you should call the cops in.

GSC

...putting on trial GW Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of that loathsome Gang of War Criminals for the crimes they had clearly committed against the US Constitution?

GSC

...now that their day is finally finally done, after eight long years!

-- GW Bush

-- Dick Cheney

-- Dan Rumsfeld

-- John Ashcroft

-- Alberto Gonzales

-- (insert here the names of the whole loathsome bunch of War Criminals with GW Bush)

oh, and let's not forget da even fiercer chickenhawks at Salon:

-- zoltan newberry

-- elephantman

-- hawkspsd

-- Lotus Feet

-- (and all the rest of that bunch too).

Why not have alla dese guyz roamin' around Guantanamo for the rest of their miserable lives, "pullin' da weeds, washin' da dishes, scrubbin' da floors, servin' da drinks, cleanin' da turds, flushin' da toilets"???

(Naaah... all dat dese chickenhawks know ta do is squawk).

GSC