I have spent the last several weeks reviewing my life and have come to some interesting conclusions. Over the last four years I have been taking medication for depression and ADD. Although I may have been taking the ADD medication for valid reasons, I am beginning to believe that the medication of my depression was incorrect. It was treating the symptom, not the problem.   That has led me down an interesting path; what then is my problem? So, I began to list out my flaws as I saw them  and came up with the following:  I am lazy. Even my hobbies get sidelined because as I delve deeper into them they become work to me and I no longer want to pursue them. The interest is still there, I just don't want to do the work. I am constantly planning and forming ideas but never implementing them, because that is work to me. Furthermore, I do not put in a full effort. Sometimes, I wonder if I've ever done any task 100% in my life. Everything I do is half-assed. It is almost as if I do not know how to do a task to 100% completion. I procrastinate. This is probably more associated with laziness. I put off things because I simply don't want to do them. Mostly, I hope they will either go away or someone else will do them. If I do them at all, I do them half-assed. I lack self-discipline. I let my current mood or feeling determine my actions. If I am tired or just don't feel like it, I don't go to the gym. If I don't think I can complete something, I quit. If I don't want to do a specific job, I find a way out of it. I cannot hold my toungue and snap at people if I am angry, even if it is not at them. I am constantly saying or doing things that I come to regret. I am a petulant child. I have no self-confidence. I am timid around people and have a hard time being assertive. Social situations stress me and exhaust me physically. I constantly procrastinate on doing work, which requires me to call or talk to other people, especially if I have never talked to them before. E-mail is my savior, and I rely on it heavily. I have a fear of failure and responsibility. I constantly seek more responsibility, but balk at being given more, railing on the powers-that-be for putting too much on my plate, or purposefully doing less than my best in order to be deemed unworthy of more responsibility (which I then rail against not being given the chance to prove myself). Perhaps the fear of failure and responsibility are really one and the same. I fear that responsibility because I fear failing at it. I am afraid to start new projects, or abandon projects in mid stride because I fear not being able to do them well. I avoid work, which I have not done before in fear of being proven incapable. Even my hobbies suffer. Perhaps my laziness is more related to my fear of failure than a lackadaisical nature.    I have talked to my wife about these things, extensively, and through my discussions have come to another interesting conclusion. These flaws that I see in myself are also symptoms of a much larger problem: I have no self-esteem.  I am a goal-oriented person and so the identification of this problem has led me to one question; how do I resolve this issue - how do I improve my self-esteem (preferably without drugs)?  I don’t really know the answer to that question yet. I am still researching the plethora of self-help treatments available as mentioned on the web. This journal will be a part of this treatment. I’ve found that talking out my problems with my wife helps me to gain perspective. I lose that perspective quite often and she sometimes grows weary when I constantly rehash issues we’ve gone over again. I do it because I need to regain perspective. Hopefully, this journal will help. So, my intent is to discuss events in my life, my feelings about them, and how they impact my goal of improving my self-esteem. I believe with the improvement of my self esteem, I will overcome my lack of self confidence, my fear of failure, my fear of responsibility, some of my laziness, much of my depression, and my daily anxiety.