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Hurry up and Wait

March 8, 2007 2:12 AM

hen I worked at the TV station, I used to come into work at around 3 o'clock to prepare for the 6 o'clock news. Then we'd have a break from about 6:30 to 7:30, at which point we'd all come back and get ready for the 10 o'clock news. There wasn't usually much to do at 3. Or 4. Around 4:30 lots of shit would start happening. The news department would ask me to whip up a bunch of different graphics, they'd decide they wanted to do something fancy with the cameras, the editors would need help cutting a certain tape, or the weather guy would come in and get pissed that we were too busy to talk to him about Phish.

That last hour and a half before the show was always the most hectic. Sometimes, the content of the news program wasn't finalized until literally seconds before we went on air. Sometimes the editors would literally hand me a tape as the anchorwoman was reading the intro for that particular news story. It was hectic shit.

Because of that, we always tried to get as much of the tedious shit done as possible before the more complicated stuff started coming down. So we'd come in at 3, get all the easy out of the way by 3:30, and then sit around for an hour or so. Hurry up and wait.

I'm writing about this because today kind of reminded me of those days. Or, rather, what happened when we didn't hurry up and wait. I got to school and I was completely unable to concentrate on anything. As a result, I accomplished nothing from about 11 to 4. But that was ok because I had plenty of time, right? Well, right around 4:30, there were about seven hundred things I had to immediately do. Had it not been for Kristin's help, I wouldn't have gotten one of the most important things done.

Then, when it was all calmer and I only had one task to worry about, I felt terrible for having blown off so much time earlier. And I felt totally terrible for letting the momentary stress get to me.

Recently, someone commented that stress is easy to detect on me. At first, I thought that was a complete mistake, but I guess it's not, really. Or, at least, my appearance is rarely a reflection of what's going on internally, in terms of stress. The fact of the matter is that I think I deal with stress pretty well. Another thing I just realized is that my ability to deal with stress depends completely on how well the people around me are dealing with stress. In general, I think I can be pretty level-headed in high-stress situations. I can be even more so when the people around me are visibly stressed out. But I let myself go a little more when the people around me are way more calm and collected.

In any event, I was pissed at myself today for letting a comparatively tiny amount of stress get to me. I'm going to have to work on that.



1 Comments


TheExpat said:

After a hectic day at school, I always find that I'm quickly comforted when I wrap myself in the loving embrace of Suntory Whiskey's Kakubin
Black, a unique blend of well-aged whiskeys. It's truly a special time.

For all those special times, make it Suntory time.

March 8, 2007 5:46 AM



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