Still can't sleep

I figured if I'm going to be an insomniac, I might as well put rule #3 into action. I think I need refuge. This place is swallowing me up and every time I look around, I see my failure to be responsible. There's crap laying everywhere, dirty clothes (mostly my sister's both the crap and the clothes) but still-- it's consuming me. As soon as I have enough clothes clean for tomorrow, I think I'm going to go to my mom's house and crash there.

Maybe it's the stress. I've always been able to just brush off stress, mentally at least, but there must be some breaking point where stress takes so much physical toll that the body reacts by not letting you sleep until you say "Okay! Goddamnit, I understand!"

Well, I wish it were as easy as just saying that and going to sleep, but my body likes to make a point and grind it in as deep as possible. No, that's not supposed to be sexual, either. Perverts.

Maybe some positive thoughts will do the trick. Today I felt really great about work. At around 6pm, the police scanners picked up radio alert that a bank had just been robbed. I watched the copy editor saunter into the photo office and see if he could round up a photographer. He came back with the photo editor, who asked me if I had my camera. It's always in my car, so I said, "Yep."
"Need you to go cover this bank robbery. It's on sunset, that's all we know."
So I got in gear and took off for Sunset. They had no idea which bank, or what part of sunset (it's a 3 mile stretch, with stoplights at almost every block). As I drummed on the steering wheel, puffing away at a smoke to calm my nerves, I saw a flash of yellow tape. I realized the patrol cars probably wouldn't have their lights flashing, so I rubbernecked and saw the reflective pinstripes on a car parked just beside Regions bank.

I had no idea what the protocol was for shooting this kind of thing, but from seeing other photos the staff (real) photographers had taken, I assumed they stayed at a safe distance and waited for an appropriate time to get some quotes from the directing officer, in this case, a Lieutenant who was at the scene. After I shot the scene, I interviewed him and got back to the office. Apparently I'd beaten the reporter to the scene and even got to the office with the photos uploaded before he'd even started writing.

I noticed he was dragging up older bank robbery stories and following their formats. I kinda wondered if that was a standard op for writers, but it seems to me that it would hinder originality. Then again, how original is robbing a bank? There's only so many ways you can write it, and if you get too flashy, people could be confused into thinking it's not really a bank robbery story.

The best part is that I was so ahead in my work that I managed to step away to shoot the robbery, come back to the office and catch up, then take a dinner break with a co-worker, come back to the office again and finish right at 11:05pm. My goal for weeknights is always 11pm.

Earlier in the day, I volunteered for a photo assignment early Saturday morning which would give me about 4 hours of extra work for Saturday, a day that I usually spend 10 or 11 hours at work due to university football games.

Wow. It's amazing to me how soothing talking about work is. This is the first full-time job I've ever had and I think I had a feeling when I started out that I was really gonna blow it. Not to jinx it now, but even coming this far makes me proud of myself. I've managed to get a job where if I really pull for it, I can get photo assignments like a staff photographer would. So far, I've covered three football games, some historic stagecoach commemoration event (Butterfield Trail Stagecoach) and then this bank robbery. It's pretty puny for 7 months of employment, but I nabbed the Adventure Race just by volunteering. Even though I have to get up at 5AM Saturday morning, it'll feel good to be back behind the lens. It's even cooler when I submit the work and later in the day get to edit my own photos just like I do for the staff photographers. I feel like even for a little while, I got to be part of a team. It's hard to feel like that with what I normally do, because my regular job is sitting in a dark room, updating the website and toning digital photos. Professional shit, I know.

Hard-to-the-core.

Well, I feel a little better now. Time to take the laundry out.