One Week

I've sickened myself of looking at word documents. In the past two days, I've actually felt nauseous pulling up my article template. I'm so glad it's a light week, on one hand, but on the other, getting through another one sounds like the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life.

I miss non-directed, random conversation. I miss talking about things I don't know much about. I miss being a fly on the wall (the longer I hold this position, the less possible it becomes to walk into a place and not see at least two people I know professionally), able to listen to conversations that shouldn't mean anything to me and being able to postulate on the people having them, without them knowing that I'm a reporter. I've always known that I'm an introvert, but I don't think I ever realized how essential being unnoticed is to my peace of mind.

I used to love having the time to search for pieces of a human puzzle at my leisure, without having to put it together in a week's time for the entire city to look at and scrutinize. I haven't been able to slow down long enough to assess the damage it's done.

My heart currently resides on an organic farm in the pacific northwest, and while it's always been consoling to know that he's still on the planet somewhere, these rough spots are excruciating without him. There was a time when distance wasn't bad, even good for building resilience to being needy or jealous or otherwise, but as I get older, I'm finding that those lessons have been beaten to death. I have learned them over and over again, without ever having had the opportunity to fuck it up. I'm done building it up, and I'm losing the ability to stand up straight. I need my heart.

Though I'm glad I have one, because I don't have the time to develop feelings for, or even meet people who don't have some affiliation with my job. Even if I do meet someone who's unaffiliated, they will be soon enough -- it's a life job, and I can't ever leave it at work; the cables remain attached when I leave the office and sometimes, even while I'm asleep.

When I go out, I see people I've interviewed, and it's hard to tell whether they liked the article or not. I haven't gotten a ton of bad criticism or anything, it's just the disconnect from having previously known every soul who has ever looked at your work, to knowing there are tons of people you don't know who might read 5 pieces of your work, every week. I'll see someone I had to rush an interview with, or had to rush writing the piece that involved them, and I think they can tell I didn't have the time I needed to treat it adequately. They might not know, or care, but what if I've made a triviality to their life's work, with my inexperience and fiction training?

I have a tendency to say I'm good, I'm fine, my life is great and I'm happy. There are times when that is true, and usually they're intense enough to throw a shadow on the things that aren't so good. I'm a born optimist, almost to a fault, and it's not often that I'm not actively trying to make my life better. It's just gotten the better of me today.