So what is there to say about a busy week that was full of strange
confluences of septic spiritual forces interfering with communication
on a
variety of levels, both material and psychological?
I’d like to say that the busy-ness, the confluences and the
communication snafus made it an exciting and unique week, but I’ve
fallen
into a rut, really, with what I do. It’s a happy, rut; don’t get me
wrong.
I love being a journalist. I’m perhaps less enthusiastic about still
being
a student, but I have great philosophy classes this term that are
keeping
me engaged and alert.
Don’t worry, though; I won’t philosophize all over you again this
week.
Well, at least not as overtly.
Having a rut is what I live for, so the fact that my
student-journalist
life has become a rut is a good thing. I’m terribly Taoist in this
respect;
I don’t want joy or bliss, really, just a nice lazy sense of
contentment.
I get that contentment psychologically from having a delicious rut
that
I can pass the years with. Outwardly, I don’t always look so content,
but
that’s because I’m busy. Or at least I appear busy.
I think I belong to a personality type that they haven’t
appropriately
categorized. I’m an A- personality. I like to be overwhelmed with
things to
do, I like to chew off more than I can swallow, I like to pack in
meetings
and tasks and bills and errands — but I don’t really like to bust my
ass
to do them all. And that way I’m never really having much down-time,
and
I’m never really bored, and I always can have this sort-of-overwhelmed
sensation about me.
Then, when I do slow down (like when I go home, put on a movie, lay
on
the couch, and literally stare open-mouthed at the TV screen while I
get
drawn into another world and another life), it’s all the more delicious
for
the fact that there are so many other (important!) things that I could
be
or should be doing.
And when I wake up in the morning, I can revel in telling myself
that
there’s so much I need to do; I’m so behind; I’ll never get everything
done
today that should be done. I can spend my day half-assing around and
getting six or seven things done, and then that will push four or five
other things that needed to be done into the next day, so I can wake up
the
next morning and tell myself that there’s so much I need…
You get the idea.
So this week was nearly perfect. There was plenty to be behind on,
there
was plenty to get done, there were plenty of things to leave for
another
time, and with the exception of a certain Bridal Guide problem, the
week
was a stunning success of being busy but not too busy, productive but
never
terribly productive.
And such is my rut. This is one of the reasons I’m so happy to be a
journalist. The trade itself has some of this
“put-things-off-but-get-some-done” mentality built right into it. Extra
research always could be done; source lists and reader feedback and
surveys
and extra investigative projects always could be given more time or
take a
little extra effort, but at the same time, the daily deadline needs to
be
met and some of those extra tasks can be put off onto tomorrow’s list.
I used to be filled with angst about my ruts, and sometimes the ruts
themselves wouldn’t be as apparent to my conscious mind as they are
now,
and I would worry about where I was going in life, and if things had
meaning, and if my efforts mattered, and blah blah fricking blah.
Then I got lucky and stumbled into meaning, into a metaphysic that
worked for me — an explanation of everything that hung together but
could
be added to and modified and adjusted as new truths became evident.
Since then, there’s no angst. Just a simple contentment borne of
finding
a comfortable rut, digging into it a little bit like a dog would, and
then
flopping down into that rut belly-first, contented as can be.
So that was my week, sort of; but I have to go now, because I have a
lot
of stuff to do before I can go home.