Fell over sick again on Friday night after a goodbye party for one of my co-workers. Too much smoke, too many martinis, too much stress this past week. It was a really bad week, too much work, no support, and I kept making mistakes, forgetting things, losing my ability to juggle it all. Not much use to anybody last week.
I'm reading George Stephanopoulos's memoirs of his time in the Clinton administration now. I always saw him as a role model, though 10 years ago I didn't think I had the instinctive viciousness and lust for revenge that you need to succeed as a political operative (though my job now is proving that I can learn these things quickly). Stephanopoulos talks a lot about how difficult it was for him to simply survive the pressure, and how elusive the idea of advancing his cause was because it became submerged in the daily struggle.
I can identify a little bit now. His job then and mine now are somewhat similar, though the stakes are certainly different and I have no illusions about having any positive effect on the world with my work. I'm about as old as he was when he first started with the Clinton campaign too... it just makes me wonder what the fuck I'm doing right now.
So I've been down sick all weekend and am now trying to pick up where I left off, but it's difficult. It's getting harder to balance this crazy job with everything else I need to do to hold it together (a creative outlet, some kind of contact with the rest of humanity, sleep).
Sara and Rick sent me a care package from the US for my birthday, some "I feel sick" art-house comic books and some music- Laswell, Soup, Low, Flux of Pink Indians, Depeche Mode remixes. I need some comfort music now though so I'm playing Stereolab ("We want unconditional, unconditional rebellion... We thought you were sensational, would you just smile back at me"). It reminds me of a dream I had back in San Francisco that was linked to that song somehow, and it got me on a literary kick to document the crazy scene we were in then, the whole sick crew... That plan collapsed quickly, so I settled with the concept of "experience as art." A cop-out, sure, but the scene was fun while it lasted and there was just no time to document it.
The idea lived on though in one of the scenes of this thing I'm writing- my reporter gets involved in an experimental art collective and gets spun in a different direction than he intends. Nothing to do with the San Francisco crowd except for one on-stage scene, but it's there. Or will be when I finish it.
The comic books Sara sent have me thinking about the creative process again. It's good because need a kick from the outside world sometimes to get that critical mass, that level of frustration that forces me to write because I can't just sit there thinking about it. The timing is good too because a long weekend is coming up, there's some kind of Danish holiday so we get a couple of days off starting Thursday. I'll try to use the time wisely.
No time left tonight though, I'm just too sick and too tired. Lots of work to do--need to get myself clear for the weekend.
Posted by case at March 21, 2005 10:12 PM