--OK, stress is a mother. I have never handled stress well. I'm a person who likes to focus on one project at a time. I can go beginning to end, wrap that up, and then on to the next. But life is rarely like that. When I have to juggle three or four or six different projects or situations all at once, I start to feel like I have a 100-pound pack on my back, like Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill on the daily, I feel like I will never see the light at the end of the tunnel. My eyes get a little wild, my breathing gets a little on the hyper side, and the timbre of my voice starts to rise into Minnie Mouse territory, squeezed by my escalating anxiety. (People can always tell my mood when I answer the phone by the level of my voice). Oh -- and my back goes out. I have a nasty crick in my neck right now. Of course, having a crick in the neck or kink in the back goes a long way toward easing the already troublesome flow -- NOT!
I'm not going to get into all that has me taking shallow breaths these days. It's all so minuscule in the scope of a world where Lebanon and Israel are exchanging bombs, soldiers are falling in Iraq every day, residents of the Gulf Coast are still sifting through the rubble almost a year later, and gas prices are rocketing into the stratosphere. Some people would count my little work and home dilemmas as blessings compared to what they have going on. So I need to CHILL.
I know I should be calm. Life IS problems, as an old boyfriend used to say. But I was raised to expect things to be smooth sailing with no surprises by a mother who seemed in shock whenever things went awry. Which was basically all the time. I am trying to unlearn the example of her responses, but it's hard. I mean, why SHOULDN'T things be smooth as glass all the time, dammit???
It's hard to keep all the balls in the air when I take time out of my busy schedule to blog. I guess whatever crushing pressure develops from my ongoing procrastination is only my just desserts. Pass me a spoon and some whipped topping. As a character in one of my favorite novels says, You just hungry, chile, that's why you carrying on this way.
So in addition to snacking my way happy, what improves the mood? Music.
--MMMmmm, that new Beyonce track is Hot Hot HOT! Deja Vu has a great sound, it's like an event record, the same way Crazy In Love sounded BIG coming through the speakers. I think it's the horns and the percussion that take it there. Very few R&B/pop records these days have big, brassy horn lines in them, sampled or otherwise. The single has that uncanny feeling of something you've heard before, though you know you haven't. I'm anxious to see more of the all-girl band, too. I'm not mad at Miss B at all.
I got to interview Beyonce just once, at a photo shoot for a magazine about six or seven years ago when Destiny's Child had just dumped LeToya (who's now rising to the top with her own single) and LeTavia and taken on Michelle and a fourth girl who didn't last long, Farrah. I was just completely charmed by Beyonce, she was like this polite, well-bred Southern girl. It seemed like an act at first, like something put on for journalists, the Houston accent and all. But I finally got that it's her way. Sweet on the outside, tough on the inside. Tough, but not ... rough. Maybe I just want to relate to her because I'm also a Virgo with big mama thighs. Ha!
An addendum: Writing that story was among the most unpleasant journalism experiences I've had. In trying to run down the inside facts of why the other half of DC got dumped, I later tried to press some of the group's entourage for details, and got cussed out and hung up on by hair, makeup, and security people and read the riot act by Papa Matt. Hey -- I was just doing my job, though I felt a little icky about it. I didn't ask them anything outrageous, just if they had any factual tidbits that they could even supply anonymously. This was before news of the lawsuits came out. I'm sure their loyalty was well rewarded over time.
Will I ever get to interview Miss B again? Time will tell.
I'm not going to get into all that has me taking shallow breaths these days. It's all so minuscule in the scope of a world where Lebanon and Israel are exchanging bombs, soldiers are falling in Iraq every day, residents of the Gulf Coast are still sifting through the rubble almost a year later, and gas prices are rocketing into the stratosphere. Some people would count my little work and home dilemmas as blessings compared to what they have going on. So I need to CHILL.
I know I should be calm. Life IS problems, as an old boyfriend used to say. But I was raised to expect things to be smooth sailing with no surprises by a mother who seemed in shock whenever things went awry. Which was basically all the time. I am trying to unlearn the example of her responses, but it's hard. I mean, why SHOULDN'T things be smooth as glass all the time, dammit???
It's hard to keep all the balls in the air when I take time out of my busy schedule to blog. I guess whatever crushing pressure develops from my ongoing procrastination is only my just desserts. Pass me a spoon and some whipped topping. As a character in one of my favorite novels says, You just hungry, chile, that's why you carrying on this way.
So in addition to snacking my way happy, what improves the mood? Music.
--MMMmmm, that new Beyonce track is Hot Hot HOT! Deja Vu has a great sound, it's like an event record, the same way Crazy In Love sounded BIG coming through the speakers. I think it's the horns and the percussion that take it there. Very few R&B/pop records these days have big, brassy horn lines in them, sampled or otherwise. The single has that uncanny feeling of something you've heard before, though you know you haven't. I'm anxious to see more of the all-girl band, too. I'm not mad at Miss B at all.
I got to interview Beyonce just once, at a photo shoot for a magazine about six or seven years ago when Destiny's Child had just dumped LeToya (who's now rising to the top with her own single) and LeTavia and taken on Michelle and a fourth girl who didn't last long, Farrah. I was just completely charmed by Beyonce, she was like this polite, well-bred Southern girl. It seemed like an act at first, like something put on for journalists, the Houston accent and all. But I finally got that it's her way. Sweet on the outside, tough on the inside. Tough, but not ... rough. Maybe I just want to relate to her because I'm also a Virgo with big mama thighs. Ha!
An addendum: Writing that story was among the most unpleasant journalism experiences I've had. In trying to run down the inside facts of why the other half of DC got dumped, I later tried to press some of the group's entourage for details, and got cussed out and hung up on by hair, makeup, and security people and read the riot act by Papa Matt. Hey -- I was just doing my job, though I felt a little icky about it. I didn't ask them anything outrageous, just if they had any factual tidbits that they could even supply anonymously. This was before news of the lawsuits came out. I'm sure their loyalty was well rewarded over time.
Will I ever get to interview Miss B again? Time will tell.
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