The Soul Suck

Monday’s suck.

I’m not talking about beginning of the week, “Somebody’s got a case of the Mondays” suck.

I’m a journalist, so normal standards of time don’t really apply to me. I hardly ever get weekends off, I work mostly nights, and I’m constantly living in terms of what people need to know tomorrow. In other words, my sense of time is fucked far beyond normalcy (This is both good and bad. On the one hand, my warped internal clock is probably why I usually post these things between 3 and 4 a.m. On the other hand, I get to ride the “go to work out at 3 p.m., go out every night and then sleep until noon” train as long as I want.)

If anything, Monday is the end of my week, but it’s also the night that the Sagebrush comes out. That’s why I dread Sundays and Mondays. We spend most of the week writing and reporting, then Sunday and Monday are the heavy work load.

So yesterday was another soul-sucking day at the Nevada Sagebrush.

My main duty on Mondays is to read pages and check stories for errors and crapiness. This is by far the worst part of my job. It’s boring, monotonous, and sometimes makes me wonder if the college literacy rate is as high as university presidents claim.

I also don’t have a car at the moment, so I’m sort of dependent on friends for rides, which creates a surprising feeling of helplessness and isolation (America really needs to buy into public transportation).

This Monday, however, did get off to a better start than normal. And by better I mean I wasn’t ready to steal anyone’s Xanex when the clock hit 7 p.m.

First off, I don’t get out of class until 6:45 p.m., which is pretty late for getting things done on Monday. I have my J.R.R. Tolkien class last, and talking about “The Lord of the Rings” for an hour and 15 minutes usually puts me in a really good mood.

The Port of Subs in the Joe also opened yesterday, which is probably the coolest thing to ever happen in the history of higher education. Printing press, racial integration, freedom of express, blah frickity blah. Having a Port of Subs, the greatest sandwich restaurant of all time, two minutes away is easily cooler than all that nonsense.

Finally, I had to write a couple stories last night. I write a weekly column for the Brush, and this week I wrote about Nevada’s BracketBusters matchup with Southern Illinois, which wasn’t announced until about noon.

I liked writing the column for the first time in a long time. It’s not going to win a Pullitzer (unless, of course, they’re into nipple jokes), but it was fun. I’ve been trying to take the same approach with those stories as I do with this blog. I think it’s starting to work.

All that stuff meant I didn’t have to start reading until about 9:30 p.m. From then on, predictably, it all got worse.

Reading was infinitely frustrating, despite the Jamiroquai, Journey, and Rise Against blasting in the background, mostly because I’m generally disinterested in what goes into our newspaper. I feel like we’re stuck in our own little world, and that we don’t do a very good job of writing about things that students care about.

Translation: NO ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT THE STUDENT GOVERNMENT.

The reading process went on until about 12:30 or so, and I didn’t get home until about 2 a.m. I was too exhausted to do homework, so I just went to sleep.

The End

My column (forgive the mug)

Currently Reading: “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien, “High Fidelity” by Nick Hornby, “Dreams from My Father” by Barack Obama

Line of the Day: “People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violentvideos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands – literally thousands – of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don’t know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they’ve been listening to the sad songs longer than they’ve been living the unhappy lives.”

From the iPod: “King Without a Crown” by Matisyahu

Movie: “Across the Universe” (love it)