x19: Grey of the fingertips

You'd think I'd learn. After all, I'm in school, I might as well be learning stuff about life if not journalism. Instead it's a continual "hmm." Getting the same-ish lessons time after time that I desperately need.

The big one is stress management. Anyone who's ever had like one conversation with me could probably tell stress and I have had an interesting relationship ove the years. I don't deal well with it, and it won't leave me alone. And despite what they'll tell you in private conversations, instructors/teachers/profs (we had this conversation earlier this week) have a fun little habit of pouring the pressure on like water on hot rocks at a sauna. So this was the case with the e-zine, which is due, for whatever reason, this week as opposed to next week or the week after. Next week I could understand, but nay -- we get to finish this bad boy up two weeks ahead of everything else. And guess who just wasn't going to budget his time for that? Right here.

I refused to believe it and didn't play along for a second. When everyone was freaking out last night, I was busy with other things (poetry anthology, which was due earlier this morning.) That, which I'd been putting off since the beginning of time (or this semester,) came first. And I polished it off handily, too. However, as for e-zine, I was sitting on top of two completed articles and awaiting two interviews (or more accurately, one interview and a number of questionnaires between two and five.)

Things came to a head and I was more than a little embarrassed by my incomplete project. Well after a somewhat antagonistic (on my part) or rather defensive exchange between me and Jody Sanderson, we came to terms. There's no real way to explain what we discussed, or to frame how we reached the outcome. It will remain a forgotten mystery of this blog why I got upset and somewhat aggressive, but it basically amounts to my as-yet-still unresolved issues of everyone and everything seeming to come down on me at once. Like I said, under stress, I get a little mental, if you want to draw it in black and white. The truth is much more complicated.

Oh and by the way, work on tuesday was good, everything went off without a hitch and I left feeling confident that I can really make this work. Which will be a good feeling to have as my next shift is Friday until midnight... it's moonlight madness, ladies and gents. We're open until 11.

So where do I stand? I have no idea. As usual I'm left looking at what life I have left and thinking that maybe, if I make the right moves, this are gonna maybe be okay. All the same, it's not like some magical revelation, as I wish it'd be. But give it time.

Life at this age is way more complicated than it needs to be, man. Not that I want to spend my time/life sitting on the couch playing video games, but I'd like to reach the middle ground before I find myself dropped completely off the deep end, to mix the metaphor.

I suppose there's nothing else to report today. Hope you've got a satisfactory amount of the shootin' one this week. I know I'm not around like I used to be.

We don't talk like we used to, like we should. I hope you're well.

Keep on rockin'
Scotto