On Being So Busy That You Don’t Have Time to Title Your Blog Entry

The funny thing about this blog entry, friends, is that I shouldn't be writing it. I have a deadline that is two days past its expiration date, it is 11:35 PM at night, and I've just settled in to finally bang out the final piece to this story that I need to turn in before an editor I haven't really worked with in the past (new magazine!) decides that I'm not worth the (modestly!) spectacular and wisely worded self-deprecating jokes in the piece.

Perhaps the scarier thing is not that I need to switch over to Word and get cracking or I am seriously regretting the two drinks I had with dinner, but that my freelance schedule over the next month is downright frightening. I have agreed to do a Red Sox package due at the end of the month, I have a huge 4,000 word piece that's sort of been waiting in the wings all year that will be due end of February, I have tentatively agreed to do some sort of sitdown discussion piece about the dating, relationships, and the social scene in Boston, and all of this is in the next two(ish) months... And that's on top of my day job editing, writing, and researching daily pieces AND, most importantly, writing this lovely and vent-worthy blog. Whew. Until I re-read it, it felt really good to get that stress quantified.

But you know me, friends. I'm not really alive until I am bitching about the stresses surrounding my writing, an infliction that makes my girlfriend alternate between stressing for me, and actively looking for creative ways to disown me. But-- at least, I think-- the stress of the deadline invigorates my creativity. It gets me fired up. It makes me reach deep down inside and, um, write mostly because I have no other choice. So we've come to that point. And this is my plan: I am going to fire up some caffeine-heavy Twinings English Breakfast Tea. I am going to slay like six cups of it. No milk. No sugar (substitute). Just f-ing straight. Whatever, I was in a frat. Then I'm going to write the Big Cat an email/e-card wishing him a happy birthday, but not in any sort of earnest manner, because we are male and in our 20s, and that would scare him into thinking I was terminally ill. Then I'm going to re-read where I left off, get confused, glance through my notes, and quickly play a game of Ms. Pac Man on my iGoogle page. Then I'm going to put some Vicks Vapo Rub on my nose, because it hurts from the negative 86 degree (Kelvin!) Boston weather. Then I shall start to write.

It's a system, friends. And it damn well (better!) work. Stay tuned to your regularly scheduled comments to see how this actually plays out. Now chillax to one of my top 7 favorite music videos of 1994, directed by that dude Michel Gondry, the French guy who did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and that movie with Mos Def and Jack Black that I told everyone I wanted to see, even though I didn't.

It's Lucas With,
The Lid Off

Lucas