Monday, March 6, 2006 | by nathan

Currents

current song: "Candy Everybody Wants" by 10,000 Maniacs

I’ve been feeling very awash today. Awash is a good word. That is how I describe it when I feel that time, and life, and the events of my existence are like this rushing river that is sweeping me along, and it’s mostly a beautiful ride but fraught with scary rapids, and of course I am not in control of the speed.

Ana was out today and so I was left to do all the classes by myself. Four productions, two broadcasting labs, lots of little problems and stresses. Had to reboot the switcher, for example. Scary. Lynn, one of the other broadcasting profs, was kind of lurking during my second lab, looking at me with this mixture of fear and condescension, like I was about to start a fire in the studio. It makes me nervous when people do things like that, and that kind of nervous insecurity makes me screw up, which intensifies the scrutiny under which I find myself. It’s a vicious cycle.

song: "Boy Cries Wolf" by Kind Of Like Spitting

So I have decided that while I could work in T.V. - I am certainly possessed of at least a minimum of the requisite experience and knowledge - I really don’t want to work in T.V. I think that broadcasting is pretty much a field for people who get off on stress, and this is so deeply not me. Twenty-five and a half years into my life, and I am far, far too tired and wrung-out to live that life. Impossible deadlines do not thrill or excite me like they do the people I know who work in television. They just make me feel weighted down and highly nervous.

song: "House Of Jealous Lovers" by The Rapture

I enjoyed making the documentary for The History Channel, because the pace of that was slower and more thoughtful. We had time to set up shots and really consider what we were doing. So I am thinking that a career in filmmaking might not suck, though it would likely require a bit more schooling, which I am honestly not interested in at this point. I was watching the Oscars last night (Felicity Huffman was ROBBED) and I started to think that I would like to write screenplays. It’s one of the few forms of writing that I have not tried very much of. And it would be a good way to bridge the gap between my love of filmmaking and my pressing need to write.  

No TV, though - nothing live, anyway. These videos that we do with the students are live to tape, and local broadcast news is live to air, and…no. Just no. I think that you have to be a certain, special kind of crazy to want to make live T.V. And I am lots of kinds of crazy, but that is just not one of them.

That’s not to say that I wouldn’t work in T.V. if the opportunity came up. I am at an early enough stage of my career where I do not have the option of turning down very many things, although I can assure you that I will never work in retail, food service, telemarketing, or murder-for-hire again. I would absolutely pick television over all of those things, but print journalism will always be my first love, followed closely by radio. Nothing like telling a story with nothing but sound. 

song: "A Road Is Just A Road" by Mary Chapin-Carpenter

Anyway, so we will see what the future holds for me, in two months when I am no longer an intern at the lovely Oklahoma Gazette and must find actual work. Have I said scary yet? Because it bears repeating: Scary.

Doing these videos all day has me wasted on stress. I find that when I get like that, all adrenalized and ready to go, it takes me a long time to come down from it, like a drug. I get kind of psychic tinnitis, where everything I think or read or see causes an emotional spike and I start to feel things much more than is probably normal. Like now, I just got real excited because the song changed and it was Coldplay, "In My Place." I got up and did a little jig. Wee-urd.

This is the reason I don’t do drugs. It has very little to do with morality or good citizenship. It’s just that I am quite nervous enough, thank you.  

School, Writer