donezo

presented my last, "seminal" piece of work for my master's program this afternoon. it was well received. my class is a mixed bag of documentary students and long-form magazine-style writers. i am neither. i squeaked into the class because i decided that one of my majors - i had two - wasn't worth a damn, so i dropped it and took this class instead.

if you want to get an idea of what we writers in the class were striving to do, read something written by katherine boo, formerly of the new yorker, or hanna rosin, an editor at the atlantic.

i'm going to be pitching my story to a magazine after the holidays are over. it's sort of my meal ticket, or a big break, if i get published, but i understand that it's a bit of a long shot. a feature-length story by a very green writer... hmm.

so our presentation today consisted of full screenings of all four documentaries (each around 20 minutes in length) and the 10 stories written by the long form writers. we only read excerpts. i was the second person to present, which was lucky, because we still had a full house at that point, and people were still awake. four hours later, not so much. most everyone that wasn't in the class had bounced (could you blame them? four unrelenting hours, no breaks) and the people that were there were completely saturated.

i went and drank a pitcher of 312 afterward with my good friend amy, her roomies and a couple of people from the program. the idea was that our whole class was supposed to go for drinks, but of course being journalists we just dissipate and do our own thing. MBA students we are not. by drank a pitcher i mean we each had a pitcher's worth of beer, not that we split one. this is the midwest, after all.

so now i get to pack up my life yet again, and deploy boxes to the four corners of the earth. i'm beginning to think i don't have the right to own anything. i also can't sleep and have a headache from the beer. i took a melatonin and hope to be sleeping soon.

i can do it, i can do it

reaching the home stretch in the re-write of the story that has dominated my last quarter. i mean literally dominated, because it's my master's thesis, in a way. it's the journalist take on a master's thesis. the last step in my professor's 10-step re-write guidelines (eight of which i have ignored) is to open a blank document and re-write the entire fucking thing without cutting and pasting. i've reached the last section and i just had lunch in order to give myself the mental energy to do this shit. it's been a solid three hours of concentration, which for me and my gnat's brain (thanks, internet!) is a goddamned miracle nowadays.

it's moments of mental clutter and exhaustion that i wish i was religious or that i meditated or some shit. i have crap for tools to clear my head. i feel like i need an energy injection right to the brain. if i was religious, i like to think, i could just get down on my knees and pray for some sort of brain cleaning. i've actually tried to pray, not today but some other time, and my mind wandered and i felt like an ass speaking quietly in my mind to someone that doesn't exist to me. i've also tried to meditate, but that shit was harder than hell and i think i'd rather just finish my story then have to try that again.

so i went and did the closest thing - boiled some water and made some strong, plain black tea. that'll clear the shit out of the frozen trader joe's pizza flavor i have in my mouth, at least. let's hear it for the final push!

argh. help.