Toughening Up

Today I remembered why I never wanted to be a journalist. I started the morning by interviewing two partners of a pottery company literally resurrected from the dead. Sounds cool, happy story, people are working, woo-hoo. But then I looked at the nine pages of notes I took and theres so much information I don't know which 800 words to yank out and feature.

While I'm trying to decipher this I'm waiting on return phone calls from two experts who's quotes I need to finish my second article on the real estate market. I take a few minutes to check my e-mail and there are five are six letters from my editor, a flurry of forwarded correspondence between the editor in chief and someone who claims one fact in one story from last weeks issue is incorrect. I write back that my notes say exactly what I wrote, but they might as well have kicked me in the gut.

Complaining party, who would definately know whether that ONE fact was true or not, verifies he's right, Editor in Chief says "gee, sometimes we mess up" and it's supposed to be done. I'm horrified, and bothered. If it was me that misread my notes the subject of my interview will be angry. If interviewee stretched the truth, I'm a chump because I didn't double check her associations. Ultimately, I realize its a tempest in a teapot, but now I'm second guessing everything I write, sucking the fun right out of it, at least for today. So I took a nap, and would probably still be sleeping if grand girls mom hadn't called to talk long enough to kill my phone. Ugh.

Pap was hauled off to a baseball game today by his progeny. Baseball is his favorite thing. With the exception of yesterday, he's done nothing but clutter up the living room, his cast his excuse for being unable to contribute in any way to the care and maintenance of this house. I'd whine about this more but I'm really happy for the alone time. Which should be used to finish this pottery article, but will more than likely be spent reading in the tub.